Yesterday, RIM announced that they would be incorporating an NFC feature called Tag into their next BlackBerry 7 update. It will let owners of NFC-enabled BlackBerry devices to swap contacts, documents, web site URLs, pictures, and videos just by tapping their phones together. Yeah, it sounds an awful lot like Bump, but good luck getting them to make a BlackBerry app. BlackBerry Tag will also let you initiate BBM invites, but something similar has been in place for awhile by way of QR codes. RIM will be opening up Tag to developer APIs, so much like universal search, it could be a hub for many disparate apps that want to take advantage.
Ideally, something like Tag would have launched with the first NFC-enabled BlackBerry devices (the Bold 9900/30 and Curve 9350/60/70), but considering some big carriers are blocking the feature, it would have been something of a moot point. On top of that, the big use for near-field communications is contactless payments, and though players like MasterCard are getting the wheels turning, there’s still no widespread support for tap-and-go payments from smartphones. The most visible one to date is Google Wallet, and even that’s exclusive to a year-old phone.
I think we’re all pretty eager to have NFC become the next ubiquitous smartphone feature, and good on RIM for being among the more aggressive manufacturers pushing it. The BlackBerry Developer Conference is coming up soon, and I’m sure we’ll get some time to try out the app there.
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