MStar Semiconductor expects new orders for chips used in near field communication (NFC) enabled phones to buoy its sales performance in 2012. Company chairman Wayne Liang has forecast that the company will see positive growth this year.

MStar indicated its NFC solution has been adopted for a client's new handset model, which supports China UnionPay's mobile payment standard.

In addition, MStar said it recently reached a deal with European mobile phone company FLY under which MStar will supply its integrated RFID/NFC solutions for a FLY-branded product that will initially hit store shelves in the UK in February. Shipments for the new FLY model are expected to expand in the second quarter when the product is rolled out in other European countries, MStar noted.

"We have demonstrated our strong cross-platform capabilities by successfully expanding end product applications of NFC technologies to both consumer and commercial markets," Liang said in a statement. "We will continuously commit ourselves to further integration and innovation to assist our customers with more comprehensive NFC-embedded mobile communication solutions to explore more addressable markets of infinite potentials."

"We believe this commercial-focused smartphone-like feature phone integrating NFC technologies will play a critical role for enterprises to improve managerial efficiency," Suresh Radhakrishnan, group CEO at FLY, was quoted as saying in the same statement. "Moreover, we also expect handset solutions with NFC-related applications integrated will be extensively deployed in various mobile payment consumption markets."