Cortus and SST show off low power SOC with NFC secure element uses

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Cortus and SST show off low power SOC with NFC secure element uses

Cortus and SST are showing off a new low power system on chip (SOC) at Embedded World 2012 that could change the industrial design of NFC in smartphones. We don’t need to tell you that everyone wants smaller smartphones with less power consumption. In an era of convergent capabilities and a focus on keeping everything small, competitive OEMs are forced to constantly improve the power consumption and the size solutions take up on a board.

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Nintendo Wii U controller to rock NFC to enhance gaming

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Nintendo Wii U controller to rock NFC to enhance gaming

NFC got another boost today as Satoru Iwata, President of Nintendo, announced that the Wii U controller would feature NFC “function”. The Wii U controller is set to be compatible with both FeliCa for its home audience and MIFARE for the rest of the world. The President of Nintendo even acknowledged that NFC “is expected to be widely used around the world in the near future.”

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Mobile World Congress NFC rumors leaking left, right and center

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Mobile World Congress NFC rumors leaking left, right and center

Mobile World Congress is coming up this next month, and rumors are rife over here at NFC Rumors about all kinds of announcements that are likely to be made. We have been so busy with our CES coverage that we have just been stacking them up, but we know you love some good rumors from industry insiders, so we thought we would let some fly. As usual our NFC rumors come from individuals on the inside of the industry. Yep, those in the know. They tell us what they can, but often have to leave out some details so they don’t identify themselves with specific knowledge that only a few know. So, think what will you of the rumors, and let’s just see which ones come to pass.

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Inside Secure supports new Kovio RF Barcode ready NFC tags

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Inside Secure supports new Kovio RF Barcode ready NFC tags

Inside Secure has announced that it now supports the Kovio RF Barcode ready NFC tags in its Open NFC protocol stack. Okay, that may be a bit of a clunky headline, so allow us to explain why this is big news and what it means for the adoption of NFC on the whole. The overall goal of NFC tags has been to allow them to become very cost effective, especially for retail usage. The concept that has been flying around over the last few years has been printed NFC tags that use printed silicon to achieve mass market penetration at a fraction of the cost of conventional NFC tags.

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Shots of AT&T LTE Samsung Galaxy Note outed, said to feature NFC

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Shots of AT&T LTE Samsung Galaxy Note outed, no official word on NFC but tipsters show a board that is rumored to be from the Note with an NFC IC onboard

These are official leaked shots of the jumbo sized AT&T LTE Samsung Galaxy Note. Last week Sam Mobile reported that it had proof that the AT&T Samsung Galaxy Note would harbor an NFC chip. A recent trend with NFC smartphone announcements is to not feature NFC at all. AT&T and other Isis members have attempted to keep the NFC ability just until Isis is ready to roll, and hence we see a lot of NFC smartphones launching and have to wait until they get tear downs to see whether NFC is actually onboard.

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Google Nexus NFC tablet to cost just $199 and come with a 7″ display?

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Google Nexus NFC tablet to cost just $199 suggests rumors

We reported a couple of weeks ago about Eric Schmidt’s comment to an Italian newspaper that suggested that Google was prepping a Google Nexus NFC tablet that would sport Ice Cream Sandwich. Schmidt told the newspaper in an interview that ”[In the] next six months we plan to market a tablet of the highest quality.” At that time we reached out to Google for clarification of what Eric meant when he made the comment and we hit the steely wall of silence from Google. Generally when we speak with Google we get responses pretty promptly with some pretty helpful information, so to not even get a no comment statement was a little odd.

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Japan Mobile NFC Consortium adopts international NFC Forum standards

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Japan Mobile NFC Consortium adopts international NFC Forum standards

NTT DoCoMo, KDDI and SoftBank have created the “Japan Mobile NFC Consortium” which will help the three carriers coordinate and adopt an international NFC standard as set forward by the NFC Forum.

Japan was the first country to really embrace NFC in a big way. They chose the FeliCa protocol as the standard before the NFC Forum had put together the international technical documents of what was to become a ubiquitous set of standards for NFC. It is fair to say that Japan as a nation has the most advanced and contiguous NFC deployment and adoption on the face of the planet. However, as NFC gears up around the globe FeliCa isn’t the standard that has been chosen by most other nations. In fact, many NFC phones sold outside of Japan only have limited support for FeliCa. Everyone else is using the NFC type A and type B NFC tags and standards and now Japan has decided it makes sense to start converting to the same system everyone else is using.

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Commonwealth Bank makes Kaching NFC mobile wallet official

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Commonwealth Bank makes Kaching NFC mobile wallet official

We already knew that Commonwealth Bank in Australia was trialling the Kaching NFC mobile wallet app for the iPhone, but the financial institution has now gone live with its app for all customers. You have to hand it to Australia, they struggled to find the value chain and ownership model for NFC just like the rest of the world, aside from perhaps Japan. There were endless, fruitless NFC mobile wallet trials too.

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GSMA colludes with Mobile Network Operators over NFC mobile wallets

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GSMA colludes with Mobile Network Operators over NFC mobile wallets, they will lose the battle for control

The GSMA has released a document called the “NFC Handset APIs & Requirements”, which outlines their mandate to member mobile network operators globally on how NFC USIMs or UICC-based NFC services and secure elements should be treated. We were told by a GSMA executive at WIMA that the GSMA are always being accused of being an inside club for the mobile network operator community with little interest in consumer related issues, and this new document does little to dissuade anyone that this isn’t true. We feel aspects of the GSMA are in the interests of consumers and in favor of education, but there are certainly facets and elements that are not.

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INSIDE Secure supplies Intel with NFC tech and secure elements

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INSIDE Secure supplies Intel with NFC tech and secure elements

Intel has selected INSIDE Secure to supply it with its NFC technology as it moves further into the Near Field Communication industry. In the last few months, Intel has come from being absent in NFC to looking like a main proponent of the nascent technology. It was just last week that they upped their membership status in the NFC Forum to the top level of Sponsor and pulled up a chair at the big table of directors. It was around two months ago that we saw a tablet sporting an NFC logo at an Intel industry event also. One thing for sure is that Intel plans to add ubiquity to NFC, and in doing so will educate consumers about the technology on a mass scale.

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Isis to use Gemalto as its TSM for its NFC mobile wallet

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Isis to use Gemalto as its TSM for its NFC mobile wallet

Okay everyone, brace for impact, we have an Isis post for you because the NFC joint venture made up from AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile has today announced it has picked Gemalto as their Trusted Service Manager. If you are new to these parts, a Trusted Service Manager, or TSM, is the service that manages and provisions secure data to the secure element in an NFC smartphone. That secure element can come in the form of an NFC SIM, an NFC microsSD card, or the preferred (and arguably more secure) embedded secure element. Mobile OS’ don’t have access to the secure element to write and change data, so third party services are used for the secure management of data and apps.

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A question of ownership of the secure element for NFC mobile wallets

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A question of ownership of the secure element with regards to NFC mobile wallets

A big question surrounding the wallet wars is concentrated around who owns the secure element. The focus is misplaced, if that is the place where MNOs and service providers are focusing their efforts. Yesterday we posted about Verizon’s statements about the Galaxy Nexus where they obviously either made an error in their statement or were intentionally attempting to mislead the media about why Google Wallet would not be allowed on the Galaxy Nexus.

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Galaxy Nexus NFC phone set to hit Verizon for $199 on 8th December?

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Galaxy Nexus NFC smartphone set to hit Verizon for $199 on 8th December?

When the Galaxy Nexus NFC smartphone is going to be released and for how much has been a mystery. However, recent leaks may have finally found the answers to those questions. The much anticipated NFC smartphone was caught on a flash ad that was released early by mistake, and it showed the Galaxy Nexus priced at $199.99 on a two year contract. That ad was seen on Android Police, Phandroid and Droid Forums. It was also reported by Engadget, which suggests it’s a little more definite than a simple anomaly. That same ad linked to a page that was unavailable and the URL and the title to that page contained a date of the 29th of November, which we think may be when the Ice Cream Sandwich NFC smartphone may be given its official release date.

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Google and Apple will force MNOs to play nice with NFC mobile wallets

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Google and Apple will force MNOs to play nice with NFC mobile wallets says ABI Research

ABI Research has gone out on a limb by stating that Google Wallet and Apple will force mobile network operators to cooperate in the mobile wallet wars. ABI goes further to project that MNO market share will erode between 2012 and 2016 as Google and Apple claim loyal users. We hear similar sentiments daily about how MNOs will ultimately have to give way to a free market approach, as heavy weights show they can take consumers away from networks that don’t support a particular NFC mobile wallet that a consumer wants to use.

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The Telefónica Wallet for BlackBerry brings NFC payments to Spain

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The Telefónica Wallet for BlackBerry brings NFC payments and NFC physical access control to Spain

Research in Motion has today announced that it is partnering with Telefónica Digital to create the NFC payments based Telefónica Wallet for BlackBerry. This Telefónica Wallet for BlackBerry partnership does not yet have a fully scalable NFC payments service and is for now being called a pilot that, if successful, will roll out in several international markets during 2012. It seems a little odd that the Telefónica Wallet is a BlackBerry only affair as it would have seem to make more sense for penetration and adoption that Telefónica would have wanted to create a cross platform solution. Perhaps BlackBerry is just the start of this project.

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GSMA Mobile Network Operators commit to supporting NFC

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GSMA Mobile Network Operators commit to supporting NFC on their networks

The GSMA are reporting that 45 Mobile Network Operators around the world have committed to supporting NFC. This comes on the back of the GSMA publishing mobile NFC specifications to drive interoperability. Both China Mobile and China Unicom have joined the growing list of MNOs that have agreed to support SIM based NFC solutions. Those two MNOs alone account for a whopping 800 million subscribers who will be able to use NFC secure services using a single-wire protocol solution. We are not sure that SIM based NFC is the best, but with over 45 MNOs globally supporting Near Field Communication, it is a step in the right direction for adoption.

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austriamicrosystems outs improved NFC microSD with Infineon

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austriamicrosystems outs improved active boost NFC microSD with Infineon to take on INSIDE Secure in retro fitting NFC into older smartphones

austriamicrosystems announced the first demonstration that enables NFC (near field communication) data transfer on removable secure elements using a micro-antenna design. Earlier today we heard that INSIDE Secure launched a competing product that also works in an NFC microSD format utilizing a micro-antenna. The AS3922 NFC microSD from austriamicrosystems features integrated antenna and active booster. It’s that active booster that has likely increased the read range.

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INSIDE Secure allows you to turn your phone into an NFC phone

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INSIDE Secure allows you to turn your phone into an NFC phone

INSIDE Secure today announced its NFC card emulation solution that fits into a standard SIM card form factor. NFC SIM and NFC microSD cards are not new. So when the product comes to market, it will enable non-NFC phones. However, so far many NFC SIM and NFC microSD solutions haven’t gives a great NFC experience. Because these solutions are slotted inside of phones that weren’t designed with NFC in mind, other components have often affected read and write distances and generally held these products back. INSIDE Secure’s new solution is said to achieve industry standard 4cm or greater contactless read distances in a mobile device with an antenna footprint of less than 1cm2. If these performance claims are true, NFC SIM and NFC microSD solutions could be deployed en masse.

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Samsung announces Secu-NFC Chip, combines NFC IC with Secure Element

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Samsung announces Secu-NFC Chip, combines NFC IC with Secure Element

It’s a busy week at CARTES and Samsung just outed its new Secu-NFC Chip, which will no doubt cause some stirring within the industry. The new Samsung Secu-NFC Chip combines an NFC controller and a secure element into one unit allowing various advantages over current ICs. The secure element is the storage area in an NFC phone where personal and sensitive data is securely stored. That storage area isn’t directly accessible through your NFC phone’s operating system and secure elements generally have tamper proof features that ensure the memory locks up if someone attempts to access personal information without proper authentication. What makes Samsung’s announcement notable is that their new SENHRN1, or Secu-NFC Chip, combines both the NFC chip and secure element into one efficient chip.

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It’s a good time to be in the NFC IC market says ABI research

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It’s a good time to be in the NFC IC market says ABI research

ABI Research has another report out that focuses on wireless connectivity and suggests that NFC IC manufacturers are in for a boom when they tot up their year-on-year sales at the end of 2011. Most of us have a Bluetooth, GPS and WiFi direct capable smartphone these days. ABI says that in some markets adoption has hit 100%. However, NFC is the new kid on the block and provides a huge growth area for IC manufacturers.

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Is the Motorola Droid RAZR the first Isis NFC phone?

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Is the Motorola Droid RAZR the first Isis NFC phone?

It was largely expected that the Motorola Droid RAZR would be an NFC phone but on launch there was nary a word about near field communication capabilities. The Motorola Droid RAZR was announced a couple of weeks ago with impressive specifications and a super thin set of dimensions that challenges anything on the market. But without NFC capabilities, we relegated it to the pile of smartphones you would regret purchasing come the middle of next year when NFC services really start to swing. However, it may not be completely without NFC capabilities.

Motorola Droid RAZR strip down reveals NXP NFC drivers

Engadget had Francois Simond (Supercurio) take a look under the covers of the Motorola Droid RAZR, and guess what he found? Yep, an NFC controller based on NXP’s PN544 chipset. In Engadget’s words, “the Linux driver is present, but hardware appears to be missing or misconfigured.” This gives us a massive clue as to what is happening with the Motorola Droid RAZR and it, of course, revolves around Isis. We would assume that if there was an NFC IC (NFC chip & antenna) present, it would have been found. The NXP chipsets are somewhat easy to spot within NFC phones when you take them apart.

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NFC Chip Shipments to Surpass 1.2 Billion by 2015

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NFC Chip Shipments to Surpass 1.2 Billion by 2015 according to In-Stat

In-Stat forecasts that NFC Chip shipments will surpass 1.2 billion by 2015. We all know near field communication is growing, but it is always nice to see research houses like In-Stat put some figures to it, and 1.2 billion represents a good portion of the population of the world. With just over 1 in every 5 people globally having access to NFC capabilities in just over 3 years, this just goes to show that the growth of near field communication is set to be rampant. That said, In-Stat are more conservative when it comes to NFC payments, projecting that only 375 million users will be using NFC payments by 2015. That’s just over the population of the United States, which seems a little on the low end to us.

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Multiple Secure Elements to grow NFC Market above $1 Billion in 2016

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Multiple Secure Elements to grow NFC Market above $1 Billion in 2016 says ABI Research

The ability to fit NFC phones with multiple Secure Elements is projected to propel the NFC IC industry to a value of $1.3 billion in the NFC phone market by 2016 according to ABI Research. The recent announcements of Broadcom’s BCM2079x NFC chip which has enables multiple Secure Elements on a single NFC phone, is a game changer according to ABI. The facts and figures fun doesn’t stop there though. ABI Research also project that in 2016 227 million NFC phones or NFC devices will ship with multiple Secure Elements.

Research analyst Phil Sealy says, “The issues affecting the location of the secure element remain a hot topic and although progress has been made there remains uncertainty among ecosystem players.”

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Motorola counts down to Motorola Spyder event but is it NFC? (Video)

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Motorola counts down to Motorola Spyder event but is it NFC?

Ice Cream Sandwich season is upon us and with it comes NFC smartphone announcements by the bucket load, and we are now wondering if the rumored Motorola Spyder / Droid HD / Motorola Razr HD or whatever it is called will be joining the NFC wunderphone ranks this week. Motorola has now placed a countdown timer on its page to the Motorola launch event that we presume will announce the Motorola Spyder. Interestingly that timer runs out just 7 hours before the Samsung Galaxy Nexus Ice Cream Sandwich is due to start over in Hong Kong, which again shows a concerted effort for announcements to come back to back and an NFC Ice Cream Sandwich phone from Motorola would enable a one-two punch to hit sales of the ever popular iPhone.

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Identive Group set to explode on the NFC scene

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Identive Group set to explode on the NFC scene: The Dave Holmes interview Part One

Today we got together with Dave Holmes of the Identive Group to talk NFC. Over the course of a few posts, we’ll let you in on how far the rabbit hole goes and the shear breadth of brain trust held within the firm. We will also look at how this in-depth knowledge translates into a pragmatic approach that the Identive Group is taking to the NFC world. In this new age of NFC ecosystems, services, products and innovation it is sometimes easy to forget that there are veterans of near field communications who walk among us mere mortals. One of those people that has practically been in NFC from day one is Identive Group’s VP, Dave Holmes.

The Identive Group is vast in the business models they service and products in which they are involved. However, much of the time the somewhat shy Identive Group likes to be that provider that works behind the scenes instead of front and center. That is set to change within the next couple of months, but more on that later. Known for their impact in the RFID and Secure ID world, over the last year or so they have turned on their collective NFC knowledge and started putting together an NFC business model that will last.

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