Near Field Communication made big in 2012 by Sony.
From
CES 2012 we saw Sony make a bold move towards making NFC as practical as possible
by launching two phones, the Sony Xperia S and Xperia ion will both come with
NFC (Near field communication) technology. This technology has been in existence
for quit a long time but has not seem much adoption by major mobile phone
manufactures. I have been a big fan of proximity marketing ever since the year
2007 where I did a lot of research on blue casting, QR codes as well as augmented
reality. But as far as am concerned, NFC seems to have taken the number one
spot with augmented reality getting a fair share of attention. In Kenya, we
have seen the adoption of QR codes by the likes of daily nations and even small
businesses that run loyalty programs but it has not been that wide spread as
compared to the west. Proximity marketing was first done by Bean Interactive who are the pioneers but QR
codes have taken to bill boards. If I were in the marketing industry, I will
bet my all on NFC coz of its security
feature.
In some countries this can be used as a mobile
payment systems i.e. swipe your phone to pay for a drink for example. However,
it can also be used in other ways such as Sony’s introduction of Xperia SmartTags.
These are simple NFC
tags that can be read by the phone to perform a particular task. For example
you could have a tag on your bedside that when swiped will turn data off (to
conserve battery) and open your alarm. Or you could have another in your car that
will turn on GPS. If you want to see how this works in practice, check out the
videos below.
The videos show that the new Xperia models will have a special
NFC widget, where each SmartTag can be given its own name (Bedroom, Car, Office
etc.) and be customized to set off whichever functions you want. It looks
simple in practice and could be a genuinely useful feature. This sounds like a
great feature and as long as Sony prices these Xperia SmartTags reasonably, we
can see them selling well.
List of phones with NFC
§ The Samsung Galaxy Nexus
§ The Google Nexus S,
§ Samsung Galaxy S II Android 2.3 handset. An NFC version of
the phone has been available since launch in Korea, but is only just starting
to appear in other markets, via Orange in Europe and AT&T and T-Mobile in
the USA.
§ The BlackBerry Bold 9900 and 9930, BlackBerry Curve 9350, BlackBerry Curve 9360 and
BlackBerry Curve 9370.
§ The Porsche Design P'9981 by
BlackBerry is a restricted edition' leather and stainless steel-clad designer
handset announced in October 2011 and expected to retail at US$2,000.
§ Samsung Galaxy Note.
§ The Acer E320 Liquid
Express .
§ The HTC Ruby, also known as the HTC Amaze 4G,A version of the HTC Incredible designed to run China UnionPay's NFC
payments service via a microSD-based NFC add-on was announced in August 2011.
§ The Sonim XP1301 Core
NFC is an ultra-rugged handset designed for commercial use.
The sub-£300 device was announced on 20 September 2011 and is available now.
§ Sonim's XPand NFC expansion pack is a
battery cover replacement that adds NFC to the XP3300 Force rugged mobile phone.
§ The Samsung Wave 578.
§ The Motorola Droid Razr has not been
advertised as an NFC handset, but a teardown has revealed it carries an NXP PN544
NFC controller chip.
§ The LG T530 is available in France as
the LG Ego.
§ The Mobiwire Cosyphone is an NFC handset supporting the
single wire protocol (SWP). It is aimed at the over-50s and at the B2B market.
§ The Samsung S5230 NFC, also known as GT-5230N, Star, Avila, Player One and Tocco Lite. The Tocco Lite was also
the first NFC phone offered by Orange for its Quick Tap NFC payments roll-out
in the UK.
§ The Samsung S5260 NFC, also
known as the GT-S5260P, is available with NFC from
Orange in France where it is known as the Player City.
§ The Huawei Sonic also known as the
U8650 NFC, is marketed in Turkey as the Turkcell T20.
§ The Sky Vega Racer from Pantech is
a high-end dual-core smartphone that is only available in Korea. Billed as the
fastest Android handset yet, it is aimed at the same market segment as
Samsung's Galaxy S II.
§ The Sky Vega LTE is
a premium smartphone for the South Korean market, announced in October 2011.
§ Shanghai Simcom East Com brand name.
§ Motorola MC75A HF
§ Axia A206,
§ Casio DT-X8 i
§ Sony Xperia S and the Sony and Xperia
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