Cell Phones and a Cashless Society

All New Nokia Smartphones to Come with NFC for Electronic Payments from 2011

June 17, 2010

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

Anssi Vanjoki, Nokia's executive vice president for markets, has announced that all new smartphones introduced by the company from 2011 will come with NFC. Vanjoki, who is responsible for consumer insights, sales, marketing, manufacturing and logistics across all Nokia products and services, made the announcement during a keynote presentation at the Mobey Forum's 10th anniversary workshop in Helsinki this morning.

Vanjoki wasn't able to give specific details about the new smartphone models, Liisa Kanniainen, executive director of the Mobey Forum, has told NFC World. But delegates were informed that more information will be made available "in due course."

Vanjoki was also asked whether the new smartphones would support the Single Wire Protocol (SWP), says Kanniainen. In reply, he explained that the phones would support all open business models, suggesting that they will include support for both SWP and other secure element formats such as MicroSD cards and, perhaps, an embedded secure element too. A set of tools is also to be made available to third party application developers.

The announcement follows concerns in the NFC market that Nokia was pulling back from its long-term support for near field communication technology, following the news earlier this year that Nokia had cancelled plans to put its long-awaited 6216 Classic NFC phone into production.
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US Bank to Test NFC in Q4 2010

June 7, 2010

NearFieldCommunicationsWorld.com - 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 Concierge service which will include a wide range of enhanced shopping services such as mobile coupons, offers, recipes and shopping lists plus loyalty card, savings summary and grocery store layout functions.

US Bank will be using DeviceFidelity's NFC add-on for its pilot. In February, Visa announced it would be running a series of trials using the MicroSD format device and, last month, a protective sleeve enabling the device to be used with Apple's iPhone was also introduced.

And a survey of delegates attending the event indicates that US Bank won't be the only bank looking to offer NFC services to US consumers in the year ahead. In total, 18% of attendees say they plan to offer NFC services in one form or another in the coming year.

Apple Unveils iPhone 4, Video Calling as Smart Phone Competition Heats Up

June 7, 2010

Investor's Business Daily - In what Apple CEO Steve Jobs described as a Jetsons-inspired dream, the company aims to make mobile video calling the next killer app for its iPhone smart phones.

Jobs demonstrated the application, called FaceTime, Monday at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco.

"I grew up with 'The Jetsons,' dreaming about video phones," Jobs said, referring to the space-age cartoon. "And it's real now."

FaceTime is one of 100 new features shipping with the newest version of its iconic smart phone, the iPhone 4. The device will be available June 24 in the U.S., France, Germany, Japan and the U.K., rolling out to the rest of the world by the end of September.

Better Screen, Battery

Jobs showed off a host of capabilities for the redesigned iPhone and its new operating system, now called iOS 4. The new device features a higher resolution display, video recording, an upgraded 5-megapixel camera with a flash, and improved battery life.

But he saved video calling for his trademark "one last thing" bit.

The iPhone 4 comes with front-facing and rear-facing cameras. FaceTime initially will work only between iPhone 4 devices and over Wi-Fi wireless hot spots, not cellular networks. Jobs says the quality isn't good enough on cellular yet.

Other mobile devices are capable of video chat, but Apple has made it simple, says Ken Dulaney, an analyst with market research firm Gartner.

"FaceTime looks pretty interesting," he said. That users can switch between the front-facing and rear-facing cameras during a video chat is cool, he added.

Apple is unleashing mobile video chat at a good time because Skype video calling is growing popular, says Ezra Gottheil, an analyst with Technology Business Research.

"But the party doesn't really begin until Apple arrives," Gottheil said.

Apple's iPhone 4 arrives as smart phone competition heats up, especially with vendors such as HTC and Motorola selling devices running Google's Android operating system.

The Whole Package

While other vendors might beat Apple on individual hardware specs, Apple excels at product design and marketing.

"With Apple, it's the whole package," Dulaney said. "They put the whole thing together, make it look great and then they advertise the heck out of it."

The iPhone 4 is slimmer than its predecessors — 9.3 millimeters — and features a new glass and stainless-steel design.

Jobs called the iPhone 4 the "biggest leap" forward in mobile phones since the original iPhone, which launched in June 2007.

Much of the hardware announcements were leaked weeks ago by tech blog Gizmodo, which bought an iPhone 4 prototype that an Apple engineer lost at a Silicon Valley bar. Apple shares fell nearly 2% Monday. The Nasdaq also fell 2%.

The iPhone 4 will sell in the U.S. for $199 for the 16 gigabyte model and $299 for the 32 GB model with a two-year contract with AT&T.

The new phone runs on iOS 4, which features multitasking, folders, enhanced e-mail, deeper enterprise support and Apple's new iAd mobile advertising platform.

The Cupertino, Calif.-based company said Monday that it will debut its iAd business on July 1 with mobile ad campaigns from big names such as Best Buy, Campbell Soup, Chanel, Citigroup, DirecTV, Geico, General Electric, JCPenney, Liberty Mutual, Nissan, Sears, State Farm, Target, Turner Broadcasting System, Unilever and Walt Disney.

$60 Million Committed

Apple has advertising commitments totaling more than $60 million in 2010.

None of the Apple announcements Monday were earth-shattering, Gottheil says. But taken together, it's enough to keep momentum going for the iPhone.

The most unexpected announcement was a gyroscope in the iPhone 4, which will help with video game apps, he said.

The three-axis gyro, when combined with the phone's accelerometer, will provide six-axis motion control.

No NFC in iPhone 4G

June 7, 2010

NearFieldCommunicationsWorld.com - 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 speech at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco today, but did not announce that near field communication will be built in to the device.

Apple is widely expected to add NFC technology to its iPhone soon, and is rumoured to have been testing prototype units, but it now looks like native NFC capability will not arrive until at least June 2011, in the device's next annual refresh.

Recently published patent applications reveal that Apple sees NFC as playing an important part in its future business, including roles in everything from concert and airline ticketing and file transfer and data synchronisation to, importantly, a mobile payments, mobile commerce and mobile payments business proposition that is set to see the company turn into a service provider sitting at the centre of the emerging multi-billion dollar world of mobile commerce.

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