Smartphone Manufacturers and RIM not sold on NFC; RFID Continues to Grow
Smartphone Manufacturers and RIM Believe NFC is a Debatable Proposition 
Stela Bokun, a Senior Analyst at Pyramid Points on global telecom market analysis asks in this article:
“So, why exactly are we seeing this reluctance on behalf of OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) to ship smartphones with NFC chips installed? The answer is simple. Nobody is ordering them. While there is still much ado about NFC services in the mobile world, particularly after the launch of Google Wallet in the US and the announcement that it would be launched in Europe in 2012, mobile service providers are not yet sure where the money will come from if they start offering NFC-enabled services and, more importantly, how much they will earn from these services. In other words, whether NFC services will be a revenue generator or just a necessary part of MNOs’ (major network operators) service portfolio for bare survival is still an unknown”.
Further, Kyle McInnes at Blackberry Cool, who attended the BB7 launch, that despite RIM committing to NFC, only one of the three phones they launched, the Bold Touch, is actually NFC enabled.
Bokun goes on to say that the NFC market is now at a standstill because the NFC innovators and the original equipment manufacturers are not on good terms, but they need to shake hands for the almighty Google is coming.
The notion that the almighty Google is coming may be detailed in this San Jose Mercury News article, but there are many competing technologies. You should take PayPal’s advice and remain agnostic towards which will win for NFC is clearly a slow moving animal that isn’t covering much ground yet. Square, a popular payments provider with lots of venture capital funding is doing quite well too!
What we’re more likely to end up with is a fragmented marketplace when it comes to mobile commerce and the Internet of Things- seeing as not everyone agrees that a three millimeter short-range technology is the best option when there are longer range technologies like RFID that can do more things especially in the spirit of telecom’s insistence that there will be billions of connected objects.
NFC continues to be treated like an experiment- manufacturers seem to be treading very carefully with the technology before going full speed ahead.
What’s Going On In The World of RFID Lately?
While RFID has been used for inventory and shipping purposes for years, we’ve also seen the technology being used for other purposes such as library circulation processing, theft control, and payments.
RFID World Canada reports that a Michigan library is using RFID for circulation processing, something that is beginning to gain steam in the United States as Wescott Library in Egan, Minnesota has also done so.
This comes on the heels of USA Today Travel warning guests not to steal hotel towels because they are RFID enabled.
RFID is also being used for cashless parking garage payments, CNET reports.
Further, RFID World Canada reports that demand continues to increase for RFID solutions- saying that the market could hit approximately $6 billion in annual sales in 2011 alone, which would reflect 11% year-over-year growth.
If you have a unique idea involving communication, social media and other things, it’s probably possible to do.
Don’t be afraid to mix various technologies together to create something uniquely useful- one technology doesn’t always get the job done.
But as always, figure out what you want to achieve first and then explore the technologies that can get you there.
