Archive for June 2010

NXP has joined forces with Ericsson, Gemalto, Oberthur Technologies, STMicroelectronics, Venyon and Vivotech to form an industry group that aims to develop a new generation of NFC-based transport ticketing services. More

The Chinese bank and mobile network operator are to launch a commercial NFC service that lets consumers make payments with NFC phones supporting the Single Wire Protocol — using a prepaid account that can be topped up over-the-air from the customer's bank account. More

MTS subscribers will be able to visit special kiosks at Moscow Metro stations to equip their phones with a SIM+antenna solution that enables them to charge their travel costs to their mobile phone bill.  More

The winning entries in this year's NFC Forum Global Competition include retail payments, healthcare, education and social networking applications. More

The Finnish mobile phone giant has backtracked on its headline-grabbing announcement and now says that only some smartphones will have NFC next year and they may not be available in all markets. More

Semiconductor giant Broadcom Corporation has announced it has agreed to acquire UK-based NFC specialist Innovision Research & Technology in a deal valued at US$47.5m. Innovision has developed a suite of designs, patents and expertise, known... More

OPINION: The Finnish phone giant has become the first major manufacturer to commit to building NFC into its devices, with the announcement that all its new smartphones will come with the technology built-in from 2011. Just as one problem seems to have been solved, however, a new battlefield is now emerging in the retail payments space. More

The announcement was made by a top Nokia executive at the Mobey Forum's 10th anniversary meeting in Helsinki this morning. More

Three retailers in Nice are using Fidbook, an NFC loyalty application that works with a simple reader costing under €100 and avoids the need to upgrade to a contactless payments terminal. More

Debit card transactions cost four times more to process than cash payments, says the UK's leading retail trade association, raising concerns that the move from cash to contactless debit cards and NFC phones will increase retailers' overheads. More

NTT Communications has launched a new service that enables businesses to offer a range of mobile marketing services to users of Japan's Osaifu-Keitai mobile wallet service. Osaifu-Keitai, developed and launched in 2004 by NTT Docomo,... More

Innovision Research & Technology has launched a new NFC tag with more than five times the memory of its existing NFC tag. Both are NFC Forum Type 1 tags and are, therefore, compatible with any... More

Business customers who purchase a Samsung S5230 NFC phone for their staff pay a flat fee each month to use the new Mobile et Badge service to track the time and attendance of field service workers such as security staff and cleaners. More

Gemalto has provided further details of the role it is playing in Japanese mobile network operator KDDI's extensive NFC field test, which went live last month. As we reported in April, KDDI has partnered with... More

The 100 participants can use their Samsung NFC phones to make payments at any of 10,000 points of sale in Poland that are already equipped to handle PayPass contactless transactions.  More

The Beijing branch of mobile network operator China Unicom has launched an NFC service in conjunction with Beijing Municipal Administration and Communications Card Co (BMAC). BMAC operates the Yikatong card, a contactless stored value card... More

Apple's fourth generation iPhone sports a slew of new features but will not have built-in NFC capability. The company's chief executive, Steve Jobs, revealed the latest version of the best-selling mobile handset during a keynote... More

US Bank is to run an NFC pilot from the fourth quarter of 2010, Brandon McGee reports from the Mobile Banking & Emerging Applications Summit in Las Vegas. The pilot will include a Mobile Shopping... More

OPINION: Licensing deals signed by Innovision will see NFC functionality being built into 15% to 20% of the handsets shipped in 2012, says the company, as leading mobile phone chipset manufacturers look for low cost ways to add NFC into mass market mobile phones. More

NFC chipset technology specialist Innovision has signed a licensing agreement with a "major global semiconductor corporation". The unnamed semiconductor manufacturer will use Innovision's Gem NFC intellectual property to build NFC functionality into high volume chipsets for... More