Where are all the NFC speakers this holiday season?

Where are all the NFC speakers this holiday season?

NFC speakers are basically Bluetooth speakers that allow NFC to pair the devices. For the iPhone there is a plethora of speakers available, but the Apple products are yet to support NFC. One of the great advantages that NFC brings is the ability to touch and pair NFC smartphones with devices like routers, speakers, earphones, etc. We would have thought that manufacturers would have been clambering over one another to get NFC speakers to market this holiday season but, in fact, choices are very few and far between.

We have seen the Nokia Play 360 NFC speakers hit the market and they are great if you have a Nokia, but the vast majority of NFC smartphones on the market are Android at the moment. That would be great but we have found that the flavor of NFC pairing that Android uses isn’t compatible with Nokia’s. Well, it’s more a fact that Android doesn’t currently like pairing too much, but that is all set to change with Ice Cream Sandwich.

We have also seen the Parrot Party Black Edition NFC Speakers but they don’t appear to be available anymore. That’s a shame because they looked great and would have worked with pretty much all NFC smartphones. The firm did tell us earlier this year that they had some NFC speakers in the making, but no announcements have been made as yet. Google launched Google Music a few weeks back and for the first time Hi-Fidelity audio has been possible from an Android device, yet we haven’t seen any JBL, Philips, Bose, Boston Acoustics or any other NFC speakers fill the gap in the market.

NFC speakers are thin on the ground, there are cheap NFC speakers available but nothing for the audiophile in your life.

When we went to 4G World a couple of months ago, the Chairman of the NFC Forum gave us a demo of some cheaper Sony NFC speakers. They worked just fine and are available in Japan, however, they would not replace your home system and were instead meant for portable audio. The NFC worked with an Android phone, but only just as it took a few tries to get the NFC speakers and NFC smartphone to pair.

Don’t even get us started about NFC routers. It is bad enough that speaker makers haven’t jumped on the NFC bandwagon but for router companies it is a no brainer to help them differentiate their products from the countless other N routers. Because really, apart from dual antennas when you have seen one N router you have seen them all and if they can’t improve the speed, they could at least add frictionless ways for us to connect without the need to encode your own NFC tag as we have here at the NFC Rumors office.

There are very few speaker systems built with Android docking stations as it is despite there being more Android devices than any other OS on the planet. So, where are the NFC speakers that will work with Android, BlackBerry NFC smartphones and Windows Phone devices, let alone more choice for the Nokia Symbian NFC smartphones that are already in service around the globe?

What we would like to know is this – if there were some great sounding NFC speakers on the market from a brand like B&W or another Hi-Fi speaker company, would you buy them? Obviously it would depend on cost but we would like to see whether it is just us who want to combine two of our favorite technologies together (NFC and audio) for dynamic sounding, clear music fit for an audiophile to have around the house. On the off chance you work for a company that is developing NFC speakers or already have some in the market, do let us know so we can tell the folks who hang out at NFC Rumors what you have and how they can get their hands on your NFC speakers. Other than that, we will all have to wait until next year to grab some NFC speakers.