New and Interesting NFC Developments

After my little hiatus, I've been finding the pace of near field communication (NFC) deployments and trials is picking up its pace.  Here's a sampling of what's been happening.

This is the area I've long said has to get the focus of development in order to lay the groundwork for mobile payments (groundwork means enough phones having NFC capability). These are primarily small deployments, minor applications, but are the sort of thing that is going to be needed to get people thinking about NFC, using it, and, more important, developers finding ways to integrate NFC into useful, productive, profitable applications.

Blackberry Tag was announced by Research in Motion in early October. 

[Tag] will allow users to share contact information, documents, URLs, photos and other multimedia content by simply tapping their BlackBerry smartphones together. BlackBerry Tag will also enable friends to instantly add one another as contacts on BBM™ (BlackBerry® Messenger). 

RIM took the industry lead last year when it announced it would eventually include NFC in all its devices. RIM is also opening its NFC application programming interface to allow developers to start making their own NFC apps.

Media Junction deploys smart posters for Jamiroquoi's European concert tour. Despite the lack of NFC-equipped phones (only the Google Nexus S and Samsung Tocca). Neil Cartwright of Media Junction says the phones will "automatically sense the contact and take the user to a webpage on their mobile browser. Users will be able to share the page with other fans and friends once viewed and they know secret URL.  The exclusive content, a behind-the-scene video, was specially commissioned for the promotion to provide a strong incentive for fans to tap on the poster."

Vox Cinemas in Dubai started using NFC for in-theater promotions using smart posters. The system was introduced by Proxama.  Exit displays allow NFC phone users to tap a tag to access movie listings and a Nokia Facebook 'Like' page.

Art Lovers Rate Exhibits with NFC at the STRP Festival in Netherlands. According to NXP, the semiconductor company that provides NFC chipsets, "By simply tapping a work of art with an NFC enabled device, visitors can rate pieces... Enabling visitors to share their appreciation for the arts with their friends via social media, the Android app also gives visitors information about the art through a synthesized voice." I'm not completely certain what a "synthesized voice" is, but but at least uses NFC.

A Concept Medical Device called MiniME is a personal device that monitors "ECG, blood pressure, heart rate, pulse oximetry, body temperature, blood glucose, cholesterol, hemoglobin and prothrombin time. Data are communicated through a cloud or internet site and shared with healthcare professionals via mobile devices." Even though it's not expected to become a commercial device in its current form, the MiniME, designed by Sweden's Ergonomidesign is expected to bring together all the stakeholders in the remote monitoring ecosystem.

Hold the Phone! NFC Isn't Just About Mobile Payments

The buzz about mobile payments is becoming overwhelming these days.

• Apple is going to have NFC in the next iPhone
• Apple ISN'T going to have NFC in the next iPhone
• Everybody wants mobile payments
• Nobody wants mobile payments
• RIM wants to own the customer
• Why aren't NFC mobile payments here yet?

Despite the fact that I'm a big fan of Near Field Communication (NFC) being used for mobile payments, I think it's important not to lose sight of the fact that it can do so many more things. And those other functions are going to become critical to the well-being of the NFC ecosystem.

Here's why:

1. In the US, the battle has broken out among all the players who make up the mobile payment ecosystem, just as I predicted last year (and in my first Mobile Wallet report from 2006). This could delay or totally derail the NFC payment world as these giants battle over the three- to five-cent fees most mobile payment transactions will generate.
2. Handset vendors, point-of-sale terminal makers, application developers and merchants will be forced to wait-and-see which technology will ultimately win out. While they're waiting, they're not building compatible NFC devices or apps.
3. HOWEVER, if there is some other reason to use NFC -- some reason other than mobile payments -- you can get a head start on making handsets, applications, and building  a profitable ecosystem.

So what sort of things could you do with an NFC-equipped smartphone?

• Ticketing for public transportation
• Movie and other performance tickets
• Point-of-sale information (imagine if your product's mobile entire web site could pop up on a buyer's phone with a single swipe)
• Location-based services such as search and navigation
• Loyalty cards (such as your supermarket discount card)
• Coupons
• Membership credentials (gym membership, library card, even checking in at the doctor's office)
• Personal information transfer (swap business cards by bumping phones)

It's time to focus on non-payment NFC applications and devices

It's time to get away from the focus on mobile payments and start thinking about ways to make NFC useful for everything else. That way the warring banks, mobile operators and handset makers will have to follow and we won't have to rely on them to lead in that direction.

Should Have Known Mobile Payment Prospects Were Too Good to Be True

Yeah, it's started. The bickering and squabbling among the players.  Now I'm on a roller coaster of thoughts about how soon we'll start to see mobile payments using Near Field Communications (NFC) on our cellphones.

Cool New NFC Logo

I was quite pessimistic when first I wrote about mobile wallet in November 2010. I thought all the players who would be involved would spend so much time bickering over technology. And there is always the problem of figuring out who gets paid.

Then I was just ecstatic when the joint venture Isis was announced just a few weeks later. "At last," I thought, "maybe the key players will actually learn how to agree on things and get along."

Nope.

My mistake. They're fighting already. Before things get off the ground.

In a Wall Street Journal article called RIM, Carriers Fight Over Digital Wallet, by Phred Dvorak and Stuart Weinberg, say the battle is now coming down to, "who owns the customer?"

The dispute centers on where key data related to mobile payments will reside on the next generation of smartphones, slated to come out later this year. Now, such information is stored in the magnetic strip on a credit or debit card. RIM [makers of the BlackBerry] and other handset makers are poised to make phones that will store this data, known in industry parlance as "credentials," in the devices themselves. In a transaction, the customer would wave the phone near a special electronic reader at a store's checkout.

 But RIM and carriers like Rogers Communications Inc. in Canada, and AT&T Inc. and T-Mobile USA in the U.S., disagree over exactly where on the phone the credentials should reside—and thus who will control the customers, revenue and applications that grow out of mobile payments.

Great.

What's the big problem?
Apparently, if your credentials/password/bank account info is stored in one part of the phone, the handset vendor "owns" you. If that's all stored somewhere else, the carrier owns you. And, I'm sure, it won't be long before your bank thinks it should own you, your credit card company wants to own you, Starbucks wants to own you and iTunes wants to be in there as well.

What does it mean?
These squabbles will all lead to more delays (or, at worst, total failure) for mobile wallet and mobile payments using NFC. Already, the lack of standards has caused Appple to wave off its first attempt at NFC, which was expected to be in the iPhone 5.

Is there any hope?
Of course there's still hope. There is no question that NFC payments work; systems have been in place for years in Japan. But the key is that Japan's system was built with cooperation among all the players. All the mobile operators in Japan have adopted the same technology and all their phones are compatible. But it works. And it could work here in the US... providing, of course, everybody finally agrees how it's going to be done.