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Back in an interview a few months ago, RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie said they “would be fools not to” include near-field communications in their next batch of handsets. In addition to reiterating their stance at the Mobile World Congress 2011 keynote with him saying “many, if not most” future BlackBerry smartphones would have NFC, RIM…
Orange is the fastest European operator to adopt contactless payments. The France Telecom-owned company plans to bring NFC-enabled services firstly in the UK, France, Spain and Poland, with plans to expand to other Orange markets across Europe at a later point. The company is starting with the Bada-powered Samsung Wave 578 — which we covered…
NTT Docomo announced an agreement with South Korea’s KT Corporation to use near field communication (NFC) technologies to develop cross-border services for mobile payments, mass-transit ticketing, promotional coupons and other services. If everything goes as planned, the two market-leading operators will launch in their respective markets from around the end of 2012. Through the joint…
While Android 2.3 Gingerbread had NFC as one of its main features, it only had the read functionality but Google has just pushed out a “small feature release” that boosts the NFC capabilities. According to the search giant’s developer blog, Android 2.3.3 now includes: – A comprehensive NFC reader/writer API that lets apps read and…
Wireless Dynamics and Visa have teamed up to plug NFC into an iPhone and enable wireless transactions in over 40,000 locations across Turkey. All end-users have to do is attach the accessory, launch the app, and tap their phone on a sensor at the store, and they’ll have paid. Generally you won’t even have to…
UK mobile operator Everything Everywhere, which is a joint venture between Deutsche Telecom’s T-Mobile and France Telecom’s Orange, announced a commercial launch of a nationwide contactless mobile payments scheme in Q2 2011. The launch builds on top of a long-standing partnership between Orange and UK credit card firm Barclaycard. Orange described the launch as the…
Google is looking to beef up its NFC team as the search giant plans to put a major focus on this technology with its mobile products. According to Phone Arena, Google is looking for a Technical Account Manager who is familiar with NFC. This individual must have: At least 5 years of hands-on experience in…
The last in a trio of BlackBerry leaks today (presumably from the DevCon Asia conference, where we saw the WebWorks SDK for the PlayBook, OS 6.1, and the Payment Service announced), is the BlackBerry “Apollo”. It doesn’t look like it’s quite set to replace RIM’s entry-level Curve 9300, since the specs (and probably the price)…
The Apple iPhone 4 has been a big hit in Japan but it’s lacking some key features that those users expect like NFC capabilities to pay for things like the subway. The carrier Softbank is trying to fix that by adding an NFC sticker to the case. The iPhone 4 NFC support is achieved through…
Near Field Communication (NFC) technology is something we’ve been talking for years, jealously citing examples in Japan where they use their handset for everything from paying for drinks from a soda machine, to getting on the subway, and a whole lot more. According to research firm iSuppli, the number of NFC enabled handsets that shipped…