SITA Lab and Orange get together to trial NFC at airport models

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SITA Lab and Orange get together to trial NFC at airport models

SITA Lab and Orange have recently got together to look further into the use cases for NFC for passengers, airlines and the security at airports. The thought of giving an NFC ticket at the airport is not a new concept. However, apart from a couple of airlines trialling NFC with stickers and apps, we are yet to see anything truly ubiquitous and usable for users across the globe. The SITA and Orange research project developed NFC apps for smartphones that allow NFC boarding passes, security check-ins, lounge check-ins and checked them out with real technology to show how NFC holds the possibility to streamline airport processes, improve security and generally make travel less frustrating for flyers. This is in part because IATA and the GSMA have developed industry use cases for NFC that cover check-in, security access, boarding and lounge access. NFC boarding pass information can be loaded securely to the travel wallet from online, over the air or at a kiosk.

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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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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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NFC stocks? welcome to the NFC funding paradox faced by startups

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NFC stocks? Welcome to the NFC funding paradox faced by startups

NFC has faced a few paradoxes since its inception and NFC Stocks and NFC funding is just the latest iteration of some of the challenges Near Field Communication has faced in its rise to ubiquity. We have said it before and we will say it again, NFC has the ability and potential to change the way we do most things by bringing frictionless physical interactions and the web together for powerful information discovering and sensor integration in most products and services we use.

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How to make a better NFC antenna with New rFid Concept

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How to make a better NFC antenna with New rFid Concept

You may have never heard of the New rFid Concept NFC antenna system, but you will soon want it in your NFC smartphone. If you have an NFC smartphone you will no doubt have become frustrated at one point or another with the ability to read tags easily. This is especially true if you are attempting to read NFC tags through glass or on certain materials like metals. At best most NFC antennas will only pick up a signal at around a distance of 4cm and sometimes substantially less. There has to be a better way, right? Well, there is and French firm New rFid Concept have it ready to roll with an advanced NFC antenna that substantially increases the performance of NFC smartphones.

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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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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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Isis announces NFC phone allies for the looming wallet wars

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Isis announces HTC, LG, Motorola Mobility, RIM, Samsung Mobile, Sony Ericsson and DeviceFidelity as NFC phone allies for the looming wallet wars

Isis today announced that HTC, LG, Motorola Mobility, RIM, Samsung Mobile, Sony Ericsson and DeviceFidelity have committed to supporting the upcoming mobile wallet provider with NFC phones. For a service that won’t even open the doors until as late as the middle of next year, Isis is certainly making a lot of noise about its as yet non-existent service. We very much view this announcement as an obvious non-news statement to detract attention from Google Wallet. Of course, these OEM handset manufacturers are going to produce NFC phones that use SIM based NFC. They wouldn’t want to cut out the ability to get on to Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile USA’s networks. However, there are a few interesting aspects of this news that we will go into later in this post.

The official line from Isis:

“Isis’ technology standards provide the direction and certainty needed for the development and deployment of NFC devices and the mobile commerce ecosystem,” said Scott Mulloy, Chief Technology Officer at Isis. “Working together with the device makers and our founding mobile carriers, Isis can provide the consumer choice and scale necessary for widespread adoption of mobile commerce.”

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Tyfone licenses SideTap MicroSD & NFC secure element to AboMem

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Tyfone licenses SideTap MicroSD & NFC secure element card technologies to Taiwan memory manufacturer AboMem

Tyfone announced today that it has found a new manufacturing partner in Taiwanese firm AboMem for its SideTap MicroSD NFC products. The partnership will also include widespread distribution rights, which is set to include China where AboMem has an extensive distribution network already in place.

“Tyfone’s partnership with AboMem in China enables Tyfone to scale its business with a recognized leader in manufacturing memory products, and unleash its established distribution supply chain.”

Tyfone’s patented SideTap microSD product can be added to existing mobile devices and it enables secure element functionality with NFC connectivity. SideTap is a unique feature of Tyfone’s u4ia platform that provides end-to-end mobile financial service solutions, from informational services and commerce to secure identity and  NFC payments.

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The NFC University ecosystem project

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Seeking the best NFC brains to help a Portuguese University develop an NFC feasibility study and ecosystem

NFC Rumors has quite a few people hit the contact form on our site to either introduce their company or products or to simply comment on the website. We love the interactivity and sense of community that comes in from people all over the globe. (Isn’t the internet cool?) A few days ago, we were contacted by a fellow from the Instituto Superior Politécnico Gaya (ISPGaya) based in Vila Nova de Gaia, Portugal, who asked us to help with a feasibility study the university was endeavoring to assess. After a couple of emails, we were hooked and thought the project was interesting and worth investigating further. The name of the person who contacted us is Justino Lourenço and he has quite the challenge ahead of him. Justino has taken it upon himself to complete and present a full NFC conversion of major services available within his university and he needed a way to get in contact with professionals like you who would be interested in supporting a perfect use case study for schools. Intrigued? We were!

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TazTag’s NFC tablet the TazPad is getting ready to launch (Exclusive)

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TazTag’s  NFC tablet, the TazPad, is getting ready to launch for as little as $400 in volume

Are you still looking for an enterprise NFC tablet for under $500? Read on. When AuthenTec’s press release hit the sphere this week announcing its biometric fingerprint scanners being built into TazTag’s TazPad, we didn’t cover it because quite frankly, it was old news. TazTag and its NFC tablet, TazPad were one of the first companies we covered in-depth here at NFC Rumors. We have to admit, we have a special place in our cold, cold hearts for them. However, that place was earned with their innovation and the way that the company addressed so many needed areas with their product.

TazPad quite literally has the best enterprise hardware specs of any tablet, let alone any NFC tablet in the space. When we say best hardware specifications, we aren’t talking about the processor or the RAM, we are not even referring to its Gingerbread OS because there are tablets that run newer versions of Android.

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Kyocera Echo Android 2.3.4 update doesn’t bring NFC support

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Kyocera Echo Android 2.3.4 update doesn’t bring NFC support

Kyocera Echo to get NFC support, not! It sounded too good to be true that Kyocera had sneaked some NFC love into its dual screen Echo smartphone, and alas it was. A company spokesperson confirmed that the Android 2.3.4 update would not bring NFC capabilities to the Kyocera Echo and that the announcement was a mistake. The rumor mill went wild yesterday after the update announcement had been made, as it looked like Sprint already had NFC phone number two right under our noses since April and we didn’t even know it. The Kyocera Echo hadn’t made it to our list of NFC phones just yet.

No NFC support for the Kyocera Echo, yet

There, there, we know, it’ll all be okay. Being taken to a giddy high and then dropped back down to Earth can be hard on the tech lover in your life.

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Australia to get NFC payments within three months, Commonwealth Bank of Australia are heros!

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Australia to get NFC payments within three months with Commonwealth Bank of Australia

Finally, a bank in Australia is going to support NFC payments. Commonwealth Bank of America told ZDNet Australia that it intends to launch a solution within 3 months with no trial. What makes CommBank’s plans to release a mass market NFC payment solution for all customers by mid-October so momentous, is the fact that so many Australian and New Zealand financial institutions have trialled the technology and failed to employ it despite successful trials.

“A highly placed source within CommBank today told ZDNet Australia that the bank intends to skip the trial phase and go straight to market with a case-based option to power up a customer’s mobile handset with NFC.”

NFC MicroSD cases finally get the green light for NFC payments in Australia thanks to Commonwealth Bank

After ANZ Bank decided to not go with DeviceFidelity’s iPhone microSD NFC case, the future looked bleak in Australia that the technology would ever get deployed. What frustrated Australians, and no doubt DeviceFidelity, was that the trial was a massive success and Australians have shown they were ready and waiting for the technology. It is not clear at this time who will be supplying the microSD NFC case solutions but DeviceFidelity is the biggest name in that particular game and it would make sense that they were utilized for this purpose. It appears Commonwealth Bank has taken up the mantle and is now giving its customers what they have asked for and ANZ Bank’s “wait and see” approach may now cost them dearly.

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Verizon Wireless aims to enable the NFC market with Isis, but could kill it

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Verizon Wireless plans to enable the NFC market with Isis, but could kill it

Verizon Wireless, part of the Isis joint venture have been speaking about their plans to enable the NFC market today at the MobileBeat 2011 conference.

Today, Verizon Wireless spoke about its plans on enabling the NFC market with the use of its keychain SIM implementation of a secure element at the MobileBeat 2011 conference in San Francisco. The mobile operator, who is part of the Isis joint venture, plans to deploy development tools for developers, startups and other companies according to Humphrey Chen, Executive Director of New Technology Development for Verizon Wireless. The Isis joint venture is the multi-carrier collaboration between Verizon Wireless, AT&T Mobility and T-Mobile that aims to deploy their own platform for their customers to use NFC technologies.

Verizon Wireless to enable the NFC market with its secure element SIM which is limited to 8 keys in a “keychain”

A secure element is an area of memory that is separated from your phone’s operating system and is built to contain sensitive data that can authenticate mobile payments. Secure elements are normally tamper proof, which means if a thief or hacker attempted to extract data in an unauthorized manner, the card would permanently locks itself off and permanently deny all access requests for data.

Verizon Wireless is enabling the NFC market with a SIM based secure element that has 256KB of memory. This translates in real world terms as enough space for 8 authentication keys, or payment services. Humphrey Chen told delegates that 2 of the 8 keys were already provisioned for Isis uses, which leaves 6 free for developers and mobile transaction providers to utilize.

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Australia may get an NFC council thanks to EFTPOS

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Australia may get an NFC council thanks to EFTPOS

It appears NFC trials in Australia are wearing thin as EFTPOS’ Managing Director calls for an NFC council to be formed to build a business case and best practices implementation strategy for NFC in Australia. He is right, the pointless NFC trials are not helping. Unless banks and financial institutions are committed to embracing NFC, these trials are empty. When a bank or financial institution can commit itself to going all the way with NFC, then and only then is it worth doing a trial to work out the procedural steps that would be evolved in supporting the technology and educational process. If the foundation is not there than how can a trial be successful?

“We can do more pilots, but … I think we’re a bit piloted out to be honest,” said Mansfield who proposes an Australian NFC council.
Bruce Mansfield, Managing Director of EFTPOS (ePal), told ZDNet Australia that he wanted to bring together as many industry stakeholders as it can to develop the best way to deploy near field communication technology in the Australian market by 2012. Right off the bat we like the cut of this man’s jib – he is no fuss no muss and yet pragmatic about what needs to be done to bring NFC down under in the right way. Of course, the business case for NFC is already built, it’s a grand slam, but the best practices and a guide to actually deploying the technology is still sorely missing all around the world. We are wondering whether other countries should take note of what Australia is proposing here.

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Bell Canada to launch Blackberry Bold 9900 NFC phone in late August

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Bell Canada to launch Blackberry Bold 9900 NFC phone in late August

Bell Canada is getting ready to launch the NFC Blackberry Bold 9900 flagship phone at the end of August, according to a leaked ad. Just a few days after learning that the Blackberry Bold 9900 would launch in the UK on September 15th, thanks to Amazon UK, we find out RIM will be bringing the 9900 series NFC goodness to its homeland first thanks to Bell. Ad below, click to enlarge.

Bell Canada, Blackberry Bold 9900 NFC phone and more within the next couple of months

Bell Canada may be getting the Blackberry Bold 9900 NFC phone, but it’s not the only desirable phone the network will be carrying. Let’s face it – Bell Canada hasn’t always been known for its bleeding edge selection of phones, but that could change over the next few months. The Blackberry Bold 9900 will be joined by some of its brethren in the form of the BB Curve 9360(September), the Torch 9860 (late August) and the Torch 9810 (late August). The network has also just launched the HTC Sensation, and as we reported this last week, July 14th is the date that the Samsung Galaxy S II superphone will be released.

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NFC stunted downunda by ANZ Bank

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NFC stunted downunda by ANZ Bank

Strewth, and stone the crows! We bet Device Fidelity is calling ANZ Bank dags or flaming gallah’s this week. Okay, that is enough for our Australian linguistic lesson for this week at least. But really, in a surprising move the Australian ANZ Bank has concluded that it doesn’t like Device Fidelity’s MicroSD NFC solutions after they performed flawlessly in a recent field trial and gained widespread acceptance from consumers. We understand that the bank would have preferred an embedded secure element but from the results it does look like the Device Fidelity option was up to the task at hand. The study used Device Fidelity’s NFC cases wrapped around iPhones and worked in conjunction with Visa’s payWave readers in 50 local spots in Sydney and Melbourne for purchases that were no more than $100 Australian.

NFC is here to stay says ANZ Bank

The results from the ANZ Bank field trial are in, and they appear to be positive. Australians are ready to move to NFC mobile wallets and yet they still have no way to facilitate their desires at this time. The study found that out of all those polled, that 90% of participants in the trial found that the technology either met or exceeded their expectations. It also discovered that 90% would like to have the ability to pay with their mobile phones as they found it more convenient than having to carry a wallet around. 90% said they felt that adoption of the technology would be fast when handsets were available, and 80% said they would consider getting an NFC MicroSD if it was commercially available.

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HTC Desire could get NFC compatibility with upcoming Gingerbread update

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Over the last couple of months there has been flip-flop news about whether or not the HTC Desire would get Google’s Gingerbread OS which includes NFC compatibility. Yesterday the company confirmed on its Facebook page that it would indeed be upgrading its HTC Desire to run on Google Android 2.3 Gingerbread.

This is the quote from the company “Hi all- We’re excited to share that we are testing our build of Gingerbread for HTC Desire and will start doing quality assurance for it this week. When we have an update on availability we’ll post another announcement. Thanks for your support!”

HTC is testing Gingerbread on its Desire smartphone at the moment and should be releasing the update over the air within the next few weeks.

HTC Desire Gingerbread rollout date not announced

First released in April of last year the HTC Desire is starting to age, and it was feared that the device would not have enough memory to run on Android 2.3. The company had said it would not be updating the HTC Desire on the 15th of June but changed its mind within an hour and we have been waiting for an update ever since. The smartphone features a 3.7 inch display and zips along with a 1GHz processor and has 512 MB of RAM. The HTC desire ships with Android 2.1, or Eclair, and has a 5 mega pixel shooter with flash and geotagging capability.

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Do you want an NFC iPhone?

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Do you want an NFC iPhone?

If rumors are to be believed, you won’t get an NFC iPhone from Apple; well, not this year anyway. The WWDC keynote speech is over and we heard nada, nothing, zip. As we have speculated in our post yesterday that may not mean that the new iPhone due to be released in the fall will be NFC free. But there again it doesn’t necessarily mean it will be NFC-enabled either. Judging by the hits to NFC Rumors we can see there are a lot of our readers wanting to know about either NFC-enabling their current iPhone or looking for information and rumors about the potential of an NFC iPhone.

Why do people care if the next iteration is an NFC iPhone?

Normally, an anti Apple detractor could put it down to vanity, status or greed as motivation, but NFC is different. Due to the way in which we purchase our phones in the U.S., U.K. or many other western countries, with the obligatory 2-year or even 3-year contract attached and the subsidized phone package ensures we end up having a large cost of ownership of any smartphone we carry. This is particularly true in the case of the iPhone which is often not available un-tethered from a contract. If you take out a contract you have the bill and the phone for at least two years. In the case of the iPhone and for the sake of an example, let’s work through some guestimate figures. Your contract and service agreement will cost you approximately (this will vary from plan to plan)$100 per month x 24 $2400 + $299 for the cost of the fully featured iPhone = $2699.00. In or around that time, it is likely that Apple will end support for your iPhone as well, as it has for the iPhone 3G when it was less than two years old. Okay, you understand the cost of ownership but what makes having an NFC iPhone so important in the next two years?

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How to turn your non NFC phone into a NFC-enabled phone

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How to turn your non NFC phone into a NFC-enabled phone

So you have heard about Google Wallet and Visa PayWave and are stuck in a contract for the next two years and find yourself wondering how you can turn your non NFC phone into a NFC-enabled phone. Well, it turns out that there are a few options in the market place. Out of the three options, two do not involve you selling your soul to your wireless carrier, which we consider is a good thing, right? The options available take different approaches to allowing you to turn your non NFC phone into a NFC-enabled phone including Micro SD memory cards, NFC Stickers & NFC sim cards. Off hand we can’t think of a mobile phone that wouldn’t fit into one of those categories so without further ado lets look at NFC Micro SD cards.

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