Experience NFC technology personally at the NFC Zone at CES 2008, January 7-10 in Las Vegas. See live demonstrations of NFC technology enabling a variety of mobile payments, including using a phone as a payment or travel card. Watch mobile proximity purchases made easily using an NFC-enabled device. Experience the ease of transmitting digital pictures over a secure Bluetooth connection. Learn how mobile phone-based coupons can be redeemed at point of sale. See a USB-NFC reader enabling card-to-PC communications, and NFC-enabled products for the car, home and office. Discover how NFC phones can collect and display information from smart posters, and Bluetooth devices can connect simply by waving a mobile phone over an NFC reader/writer.

Mobile contactless solutions based on near field communication (NFC) technology are still in their infancy, but this constitutes a promising area of development for numerous new services based on proximity interactions between the end user and their physical environment, according to a new Research and Markets report. Operator demand for NFC phones is the main driver for the development of NFC-enabled phones on a wider scale. This is still pretty much the trial stage for most operators around the world, but according to the report, this is about to change as an increasing number of commercial launches are due to take place in 2008. Additionally, NFC’s standards need to be finalized before NFC-enabled phones will become a widely sold product, which is predicted to happen during the second half of 2008.

Bluetooth SIG’s announcement of adopting the new spec for Bluetooth, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, made it a top Gear Live’s most popular episodes for 2007. In this episode, Mike Foley gives a first look at what is improved in the new spec, and shows off near field communication technology that is integrated into the new Bluetooth 2.1+EDR. The new standard also expects to yield a better battery life five times greater than the current battery life.   

Trevor Pavey,
Contactless Payments Manager,
Texas Instruments

In the world of payments, contactless technology continues to make waves. With more than 20 million cards issued in the last year, more contactless payment devices in more consumers’ hands, means a greater potential for more revenue.

More consumers, more devices, more revenue … these trends will continue in 2008, but we expect the contactless payments market to be dominated by three other “Ms” as well – merchants, mobile payments and multi-applications. In these areas, we’ll see new merchant categories and merchant education of consumers, cards that carry multi-applications like payment and transit, and more NFC trials and progress on the path to developing the business case for NFC-enabled mobile payments.

Sprint and BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) with partners Jack in the Box, First Data, and Western Union Speedpay have launched an NFC payment scheme allowing users to pay their fares using their phone. The trial will be conducted in the San Francisco Bay Area from January 2008 to May 2008. More information can be found out at the Sprint website. And if you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, maybe you could be eligible to use the phone.  

NXP Semiconductors recently opened a center for showcasing advanced concept and product testing, the Next Experience Lab located in the Netherlands. The new Next Experience Lab, which joins a network of four other centers globally, will allow NXP and its partners, such as BMW, to examine the impact of technologies on consumers, seeking answers to questions such as, how will the convergence of media such as music, TV, video and internet impact consumers of the future? What standards and partner eco-systems are needed to ensure a seamless, compelling user experience?

The NFC Forum, a non-profit industry association that advances the use of Near Field Communication technology, is looking for innovative NFC solutions in their competition named Touching the Future: NFC Forum Global Competition. In the competition, developers in a commercial track vie for the honor of having their solutions named “The Best NFC Service of the Year 2008,” while a research track recognizes “The Most Innovative NFC Research Project of the Year 2008.” Focusing on the theme “Innovation at Your Fingertips,” the competition is intended to promote the development and deployment of innovative and exemplary NFC services. Entries will be judged on their innovation, commercial potential and usability, as well as quality of design and implementation.

Robert M. Fee
General Manager North America
LEGIC Identsystems

If last year’s dramatic growth of contactless smart cards and applications is any indication of what is to come, then we are in for another exciting year. The proliferation of the technology and associated standards extend the contactless reach well beyond physical and logical access to high growth markets such as transit, NFC, e-Payments and even the campus card. This upward trend has no ceiling as organizations across the spectrum expand use of their “credential program” to applications that directly impact operations, thereby lowering costs while increasing efficiencies.

NXP Semiconductors and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) are jointly presenting seven technological papers at the 2007 International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM), a forum for the presentation of microelectronic advances. Among the new technology presented by NXP-TSMC Research Center is a new embedded memory technology with superior performance, up to 1000 times faster than traditional non volatile memories, coupled with scalability and reduced power consumption that is also 5-10% cheaper to manufacture than regular embedded memory. This technology will be helpful, for example, to prevent data stream interruptions and increase security of transactions when using NFC (Near Field Communication) to complete mobile payment transactions or content upload.

The Near Field Communication (NFC) Innovation Awards,created by Innovision R&T, are making some university students quite happy. The company launched the competition to find the most innovative uses of NFC enabled phones to efficiently encode RFID tags while only using 96 bytes of memory. Although the competition was open to both university students and business employees, all three of the final designs come from students. Of of the finalists, from the North East Wales Institute (NEWI), designed a new car identification system to help police prevent vehicle crimes. The concept uses NFC tags containing information about the car and the registered driver of the car, which can then be compared to information provided by the driver of the car. The tags will be placed in the bottom right hand corner of car window so they can be easily scanned by officers using Nokia 6131 NFC phones. Innovision R&T hopes the winning design will provide businesses with insight into the opportunities of NFC technology. The full report about the students’ concepts is available at the Evening Leader.