GSMA Mobile World Live NFC webinar brings Orange, Samsung & Velti together Part One

GSMA Mobile World Live webinar brings Orange, Samsung & Velti together for NFC discussion Part One

What happens when you bring Orange, Samsung and Velti together to chat about NFC from each organization’s unique perspective? You learn things! It’s been a busy couple of days for NFC, but today GSMA made time to bring three key players together for a frank discussion about NFC. If you couldn’t make the seminar, you missed out on a very interesting discussion that gave three very different perspectives on the emerging NFC industry, strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities (to use the old SWOT analysis terminology). No worries though, we were there and can bring you the highlights. We have broken this post out into two sections because the information communicated was so vast and interesting we wanted you to not miss a thing!

GSMA Mobile World Live NFC webinar was chaired by John Devlin of ABI Research

John Devlin from ABI Research chaired the webinar and gave a brief overview of the industry talking about NFC mobile wallets, fragmentation concerns and Google Wallet’s aims to move across the pond next year. Devlin shared that by the end of this year ABI expected there to be 35 million NFC phones in circulation, and that a 2x – 3x rollout growth would occur this next year. Devlin went further by stating that “half of smartphones will have NFC in 2015.” In line with what most people expect at this time John Devlin pointed out that the “Wallet Wars are coming,” and that fragmentation of services, APIs and a fight to ascertain who owns customers’ accounts is expected to ensue. Ah, the open market – it allows the strongest that provide the best value to rise to the top and emerging disruptive technologies from small startups to change the world. Well, that is if large corporations don’t plot together to close the market off that is, but more on that later.

Devlin said, “the playing field will need to thin, it is already looking congested,” and that is very true. However, a multi-wallet culture is expected to emerge where consumers may use competing wallets and NFC applications for different purposes and in that case, a congested playing field becomes a fertile landscape for innovation with mobile Darwinism sorting the wheat from the chaff. Nonetheless, Devlin’s view is valid to make adoption an easy process for consumers in these early days. We at NFC rumors expect to see a maturing industry evolve where choice is a fundamental part of an educated consumers wants and needs, but that may be a couple of years out as yet.

Devlin continued by saying, “NFC is more than payments, it’s a disruptive enabler,” and explaining that a key benefit that would emerge would likely be one-click buying and /or one-click commerce. Looking at the industry in the meta sense, John Devlin added, “NFC presents a great opportunity,” and that with NFC “Marketing capabilities are very high.”

The Blame Game is how Devlin described the chicken and egg game that has occurred between OEMs and MNOs, stating that OEMs have said that they need live services to make it worth while producing NFC handsets that involve extra costs and R&D, and that MNOs are blaming OEMs for not bringing NFC phones to market. He went on to further and pointed out the impacts and net results of the argument which surrounds who owns customers is having on the industry, perhaps curtailing it from growing to its full potential. Stating that the standards and specifications are fragmented, Devlin pointed out how the sheer levels of competition, all of whom have their own vision of an NFC ecosystem, are fragmenting the industry before it gets off the ground. Devlin also shared the keen and acute observation that a multi-platform application solution has still not been trialed and beyond that, roaming would be a future issue that commercial services and consumers would probably face. All we can say is that we love to hear smart people who can view the emerging NFC industry from a top down view talk!

GSMA Mobile World Live NFC webinar Orange

Orange was due to be represented by Daniel Gurrola but it appeared that there may have been a last minute change, and we unfortunately didn’t catch the surname of Simon, who stood in. Orange sees NFC not as a product but as a rich platform and ecosystem for mobile service innovation. Orange went on to explain how they had pioneered NFC payments in Nice, France and with Barclay Card and the Quick Tap Android app in the UK. The man from Del Monte  Orange also shared that the company was currently engaged in trials in both Poland, with WBK, and Spain for public waste management.

Orange are encouraged by the demand level for NFC payments and quoted a Harris Interactive Concept test that revealed up to 68% of UK consumers had shown an interest in using their phones for NFC payments. Interestingly, in the same report NFC loyalty cards indexed lower than payments, however, this could simply be a matter of education and awareness at the potential impact that NFC loyalty programs could have for consumers. To that end, Orange stated that their focuses would revolve around payments, public transport and loyalty cards.  Mobile top ups also is an area the MNO is interested in entering into with greater gusto, as Orange sees the frictionless nature of NFC being more convenient to encourage usage of PAY AS YOU GO services. Over here in the States, PAYG hasn’t taken on the same way it has been embraced in the UK, but take it from us, it is big business in many European countries.

Orange also highlighted the impacts NFC could have on gaming sighting Rovio’s Angry Birds magic game as the poster child for interactive location based gaming. Getting to the meat of what it is going to take to proliferate NFC throughout the world, Orange pointed out that a lot of cooperation would be required citing that greater amounts of NFC phones would need to be available in the marketplace, that there would be incremental costs for enabled devices and NFC SIMS but that those costs would likely reduce as NFC becomes a standard feature. Simon finished off by giving us a new term that sent shudders down our necks “ONSM” or Operator Network Service Managers, which appears to be a hybrid of mobile network operator and trusted services manager, and further points out the MNOs thirst for control in the NFC ecosystem. We have more on that in our next post from Tom, so pop back a little later.

Overall, Orange are taking NFC payments and associated services seriously and are fully engaged in getting ready to handle the expected onslaught of NFC phones and services over their network. However, in a not-so-surprising move, the company admitted that it would only support NFC SIMs or UICC based transactions on its network which has far reaching implications that are not what we would call positive for innovation and NFC on the whole.

Check out part two of the GSMA Mobile World Live webinar bringing Orange, Samsung & Velti together for NFC discussion by clicking here.