China Mobile, the world’s largest mobile operator with 470 million subscribers, and China Unionpay, the national bank card association, were amongst the first in the world to field test NFC back in 2006. Now, both companies are taking a second look at mobile contactless payments and mobile operator China Unicom is getting in on the action too… More
The Market
What kind of Trusted Service Managers is NFC likely to need — and how many will there be?
GUEST COMMENT: We’re unlikely to end up with a single TSM per country, or per region, or per operator — which isn’t what many people imagined when the TSM model became current, writes Dave Birch of Consult Hyperion. More
How successful are NFC stickers and microSD solutions likely to be?
A new white paper compares the advantages and disadvantages of alternative NFC form factors — and looks at how much market share each technology is likely to gain. More
NFC Forum and Mobey Forum to work together on the development of mobile payments standards
The NFC trade association has signed a collaboration agreement with the international mobile financial services forum to develop open standards for the delivery of secure, interoperable mobile financial transactions. More
What’s the current state and future potential of NFC in the Americas?
Work is now almost complete on the Asia-Pacific section of The NFC Report, the new research report being written by Near Field Communications World’s editor, Sarah Clark. Now, our attention is turning to the Americas… More
NFC Forum adds new, lower cost membership for Implementers
The new ‘Implementers’ category halves the cost of membership for companies looking to build NFC solutions. More
Introducing The NFC Report, our new industry research project
OPINION: We’ve been burning the midnight oil for the last few weeks here at NFCW, putting the finishing touches to the website for our new research project, The NFC Report. More
First pages from The NFC Report now available to view free of charge
The first sections of a new research report by Sarah Clark, editor of Near Field Communications World, are now complete. Sample pages can now be viewed free of charge on The NFC Report’s website — and NFCW readers who order the report by 31 July can save 15% on the usual pre-publication price. More
NFC Forum reveals N-Mark symbol
The stylized ‘N’ symbol is designed to make it easy for consumers to spot embedded NFC tags in everything from posters to bus stop signs and medicines to food packaging and magazine pages. More
Innovision deals expected to lead to low-cost mass market NFC phones
Three new licensing deals should see NFC being built into mass market handsets for under $1 — but not until 2013, says Innovision CEO David Wollen. More
Swiss operators form working group to promote NFC payments
Orange, Sunrise and Swisscom have formed a working group, open to all, with the aim of developing a standardised, national NFC platform from early 2010. More
Vivotech awarded key OTA provisioning patent, wins new funding
The contactless and NFC infrastructure specialist has been granted a broad patent covering the over-the-air provisioning of payments cards, loyalty cards and other non-payments cards to NFC phones — and has also secured an extra US$8.6m in funding. More
NXP transfers its mobile services business to Gemalto
NXP and Gemalto have signed a deal that will see Gemalto taking over NXP’s mobile services business unit in Sophia Antipolis. More
The NFCW Jobs Board: Your chance to play a part in the growth of NFC
Our new Jobs Board features five vacancies at Qualcomm’s mobile commerce division and a part-time job, working from home for a US-based start-up — with equity on offer… More
2009 will be the year of contactless payments, says Visa Europe boss
As he reported the payments company’s latest trading results in Brussels last week, Visa Europe’s chief executive confirmed innovation is key to the company’s plans for the coming year. More
Phone setup difficulties stop 95% of people using more data services
The ease of use of NFC is touted by many observers as one of its key advantages. New research from Mformation confirms just how strong a market driver this could prove to be… More
CES 2009: NFC competitors and enablers on display
There wasn’t much to see in the way of mainstream NFC developments at the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show — but some interesting potentially competitive technologies and enabling solutions made the massive Las Vegas event worth casting an eye over. More
NFC handset delays still to be expected says IMS Research
NFC handset availability will start to ramp up in 2010 but handsets using the GSM Association’s preferred Single Wire Protocol approach to NFC won’t be around in volume until 2011 and beyond. More
NFC isn’t really six years away, says ABI
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
Alliance forms group to promote “central role” of SIMs in NFC
The SIM card manufacturers’ association has reacted to the GSMA’s call for mass market NFC-enabled handset availability by creating a dedicated working group aimed at promoting the advantages of putting the SIM at the centre of an NFC system. More