IMS Research is predicting 2011 will be the year that NFC “finally comes good and takes-off.” “The NFC market has encountered many false dawns from its inception almost seven years ago,” comments Senior Market Analyst Don Tait. “The launch of a number of NFC-enabled smart phones in 2011 is helping the market to gain traction. […]

NXP Semiconductors, the company that helped Google integrate NFC into Anroid 2.3, is predicting that between 40 million and 100 million NFC-enabled mobile phones will ship this year, according to IntoMobile. “Every time we talk to our friends at Google, they tell us to double the numbers for the Android expectations,” NXP CEO Rick Clemmer […]

Jeipang, China’s location-based social network a la Foursquare, has begun testing a new system that lets users “check-in” to a location using NFC, reports VentureBeat. Jeipang kicked off the pilot at the Strawberry Music Festival in Beijing last week by distributing about 1,000 NFC tags to concert attendees. The tags let users automatically check into […]


France’s AIRTAG is partnering with 
Nokia to launch a virtual 
loyalty
 card
 using
 peer‐to‐peer
 NFC
 technology
 on
 Nokia’s
 C7 handset.
 The
 app,
 which
 is 
based 
on AIRTAG’s 
fidBook 
technology, 
allows 
users 
to 
collect
 loyalty
 points
 and
 download
 coupons
 directly to
 their
 phone. Data is transmitted through direct communication
 with 
an 
NFC
 reader in 
peer‐to‐peer 
mode, […]

Research In Motion (RIM) has announced that its forthcoming smart phones, the Blackberry 9900/9930, will feature Near Field Communications. The new handsets will enable payments, with more information about this functionality to be released closer to the launch in the summer, according to a RIM spokesperson. This is the first implementation of NFC on Blackberry […]

In a bid to become the mobile payment platform of choice, Bling Nation has launched a social media element to its contactless Bling Tag offering. Introduced in October 2010, FanConnect is a rewards and loyalty application that intertwines contactless payments, social marketing and the ubiquitous Facebook page. A Bling Tag is a contactless chip that […]

Ingenico has announced it will provide retailers participating in Google’s new NFC pilot with hardware designed to accept mobile coupons. According to Finextra, Ingenico CEO Philippe Lazare told AFP news agency that Google has contracted the company to install its NFC-enabled point of sale equipment at retailers in New York and San Francisco. Originally thought […]