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elctrnx_lyf
All depends on identifying the benefits of this technology and the areas where ...
Luis Sanchez
Qualcomm still sees NFC as third-party IC
Peter Clarke
9/13/2010 6:45 AM EDT
LONDON – Qualcomm Inc. has no immediate plans to bring near field communications (NFC) into its semiconductor offering for makers of mobile handsets. Even though Qualcomm has engineers working on NFC it is not offering its own silicon and steers handset makers to work with third-party suppliers of NFC chipsets.
NFC is based on the RF-energized tag technology known as RFID operating at 13.56-MHz.It has been touted as a means of making electronic micro-payments and is already used for some ticketing and public transport applications.
Deployment of NFC within mobile phones has long-promised to turn them into electronic wallets although a lack of consensus between banks and mobile phone service operators has stymied such moves. Rumors are surfacing that Apple is pushing to deploy the technology in the next iteration of its iPhone and in recent weeks Broadcom announced the acquisition of NFC pioneer Innovision Research & Technology plc (Cirencester, England) for $47.5 million in cash.
Ben Timmons, senior director responsible for business development at Qualcomm Europe, said that whereas GPS, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi are covered by Qualcomm chips for now companies that want to include NFC must work with an third-party vendor. "We do have NFC engineers but they are predominantly working on software," he said.
Qualcomm Ventures made an investment of 4 million euros (about $5.1 million) in February 2009 in Inside Contactless SA (Aix-en-Provence, France) when it was announced that Qualcomm would work with Inside Contactless on two 3G handset reference designs—one each for UMTS and CDMA2000 networks—that combine Qualcomm's Mobile Station Modem chipsets with Inside's MicroRead multi-standard NFC chip. Other investors in Inside Contactless include Nokia and Motorola.
Related links and articles:
Broadcom's NFC play: Because time is right
French lab takes RFID towards 10-Mbit/s
NXP, Toppan gain NFC design-win in ThinkPad PCs
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chanj
9/13/2010 12:28 PM EDT
There are indeed more business obstacle than technical obstacle in the application of NFC. MTR in HK has been using MTR for years. It has become an electronic wallet for people in HK. Anyone knows whether there are any country or city implementing eWallet?
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Luis Sanchez
9/13/2010 4:47 PM EDT
I don't know of any other place that uses the NFC for ticketing.
I find this technology very interesting. But I don't see the reason why Qualcomm recommends to go to 3rd party providers to use this technology. Perhaps they are not too convinced that it will catch up yet. Broadcom is though. But considering the last paragraph of the article, Nokia and Motorola are also investing in projects of this new technology so I think when Apple comes out with their NFC enabled iPhone, the other mobile manufacturers will come out also.
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elctrnx_lyf
9/15/2010 11:21 PM EDT
All depends on identifying the benefits of this technology and the areas where it can be used. If there is not many customers like banks and public transport who are not embracing this technology, then there is no use in making it available in their chips. The infrastructure setup to use such technologies is feasible only in few countries. We need few big boys who can promote it .....
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