Abstract
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. For promises to turn into
reality, NFC requires a complex business and technology framework to be set
up, among which the availability of NFC-enabled phones is one of the most
critical elements. In a few countries in Europe and Asia-Pacific, NFC has
begun to move into the commercial development phase, but these early launches
are doomed to remain small scale until a wider choice of compliant phones
becomes available.
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 this is about to change as an
increasing number of commercial launches are due to take place in 2008.
However, this demand for NFC-enabled handsets is still quite fragmented, with
different technical architectures used and different applications being rolled
out. In addition, the NFC standardisation needs to be finalised, with a first
complete set of standards released probably by the end of 1Q08. Overall, the
availability of NFC-compliant phones in volumes will only start from the
second half of 2008.
While in the short term there still remain important challenges for the
development of NFC-enabled devices, we envisage that in the long term NFC will
be a feature supported on the large majority of the phones sold, in all price
bands. NTT DoCoMo has already reached this stage today with the FeliCa
contactless technology, which is now embedded in about 80% of the phones sold
by NTT DoCoMo in Japan. There are no great technological or cost barriers for
NFC to be integrated quickly into a wide range of devices - unlike cameras or
Bluetooth, which were first restricted to high-end devices.
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