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It wasn’t 3D stealing the show at this year’s Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona, Spain, but near field communication (NFC), a technology thought to settle, once and for all, the “mobile wallet” and “mobile payment” discussion.
For those not yet familiar with it, NFC is a set of short-range wireless technologies, typically requiring a distance of 4 centimeters or less – hence the word “near” in its name.
NFC operates at 13.56 MHz and at rates ranging from 106 kilobits per second to 848 kbps – always involving an initiator and a target.
The initiator actively generates an RF field that can power a passive target and the simplicity of it means we’ve already started to see NFC targets taking on super simple form factors like tags, stickers, key fobs, or cards that don’t need batteries. But phone makers are now going a step further and sticking NFC capability inside the device itself – be it through SIM or software.
Google Inc., Research In Motion Ltd. and Visa have already come out in full support of the technology and Apple Inc.’s recent hiring of NFC expert Benjamin Vigier has sparked rumors of NFC capability in the next iPhone. Even the GSMA said on Monday it was committed to the launch of commercial NFC services “in select markets” by 2012.
Of course, the GSMA’s interest in the technology centers mainly around preventing fragmentation through vigorous standardization and interoperability, but whether it will win this battle remains to be seen.
Operators, especially, have a vested interest in the technology, because by integrating NFC onto the SIM rather than into the phone software, carriers can position themselves to take a slice of every transaction made through NFC payment.
Indeed, some 16 operators – including the likes of China Unicom, O2 and Vodafone Group plc – have also signed up for launching NFC services from 2012. This is something neither Apple nor Google will likely be too thrilled about as it ignites a veritable war about NFC in hardware/software vs. NFC on SIM.
Indeed, at MWC last week, Google’s Eric Schmidt waxed lyrical about NFC and called mobile payments a “mega-scale opportunity for us.”
The Google Nexus S already sports NFC capability, as does Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. ’s newly announced Samsung Galaxy S II and Samsung Wave 578. Even Nokia Corp. hasn’t missed the NFC wave with its C7-00, 6216 Classic, 6212 Classic and 6131 all supporting it. RIM and Motorola Mobility Inc. are next in line we’re told.
Meanwhile, Qualcomm Inc. spent MWC talking up peer-to-peer mobile communication, which effectively puts NFC on chip, bringing the technology down to component level, but this model likely won’t be seen in real handsets for a little while yet.
Still, the buzz over the technology is electric, the controversy – mainly over security and who “owns” NFC placement on a device – is there, now we just have to watch and see how it all plays out.
