Archive for December 2008

Membership of the NFC Forum is continuing to grow at a rapid pace. Handset manufacturers, mobile service providers, payment services providers, chip makers, solution developers, municipalities and academic institutions have all recently joined up. More

OPINION: ABI Research caused quite a stir this week when it distributed a press release saying NFC has taken too long to develop, that other mobile payments solutions such as SMS have beaten it to market and it will now be six years before NFC becomes a viable mobile payments solution. More

The BT team responsible for the communications infrastructure at the London 2012 Olympic Games is exploring ways to use mobile services to enhance the consumer experience. Under discussion are phone voting and the use of NFC for small payments and for event staff management. More

A controversial press release from ABI Research this week seemed to indicate the company believes it will be six years before NFC can offer viable large-scale mobile payment solutions. A little further investigation, though, finds the analysts still expect to see the first major orders at the end of next year... More

The 'Internet of Things' is one of those terms that everyone vaguely understands — but is almost impossible to describe exactly. At a meeting in Shanghai last week, members of the Casagras project sat down to thrash out a definition and a vision statement that would be acceptable to all. More

The EU-funded Rolled project has developed a cost-effective way to produce flexible, organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) using roll-to-roll manufacturing technology. That means they could be mass produced very cheaply and an NFC phone could be used to interact with OLEDs incorporated into everything from product packaging to posters and beyond. More

Near Field Communications World's editor Sarah Clark is in charge of the conference programme for the NFC World Congress, to be held in Brussels on 16-18 June 2009. The preliminary agenda has now been finalized and this is your chance to be considered for one of the speaker slots... More

OPINION: It's the big, bank-led trials that have had most of the NFC publicity so far. Away from the bright lights of the payments arena, though, there are quieter companies already enjoying commercial success with NFC.  More

British gadget retailer Firebox is aiming to turn NFC into the must-have gift for geeks and gadget lovers this Christmas with a £39.99 Tikitag starter kit that includes a tag reader and ten NFC-compatible RFID stickers... More

Five hundred ING customers in Bucharest are to be the first in the world to have a prepaid Maestro PayPass account loaded onto their NFC phone. More

France's largest retail chains have agreed to work together with the country's leading mobile operators to put in place a series of large scale near field communication trials that will see consumers using NFC phones to make payments and manage their loyalty cards. More

The mobile operator is working with an Austrian eHealth research team to develop telemedicine services that use NFC to transmit patient data securely over the air. More

Product line-up includes media badges for use on music, data and movie discs plus tags for NFC ticketing, pairing and other applications... More

Two more companies have signed up to become resellers of the Finnish workforce management solutions specialist's NFC-based time and attendance and location-sensitive data capture solutions. More