LONDON A system that allows hotel guests with NFC-enabled mobile phones to bypass the check-in process and unlock their doors using their phones was one of the winners in a competition held this week at the 2nd European NFC Developers Summit in Monaco.
The project, from Norwegian company VingCard Elsafe, won the commercial track, while the research track segment was won by a team from Lancaster University, England, for a project that uses NFC technology to allow mobile phone handsets and public information screens to share display space, overcoming the screen size limitations of mobile phone displays.
The winners were selected from a total of 20 finalists and over 50 entries from 21 countries.
Sponsors of the competition were Nokia, Over-C, SCM Microsystems, Innovision Research & Technology plc, Inside Contactless, Stollman E+V GmbH and Wireless Information Multimedia Application (WIMA).
"Both winning submissions demonstrate how effective NFC technology can be in supporting creative, yet simple and elegant, solutions to real-world problems from unlocking hotel doors to enhancing users' interactions with their mobile phones," commented Gerhard Romen, vice chairman of the Forum and head of NFC market development at Nokia.
Placed second in the commercial track was Hansaprint of Finland for its platform for smart product creation, while the runner up in the research track was a group from the University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis MBDS of France for the development of a personalized mobile shopping service dubbed "Ticket Tap".
Related Articles:
NFC uptake forecasts downgraded for near term
Software gap in NFC mobile payment vision
Reporter's notebook: Octopus consumes Hong Kong
'Tube' to trial mobile phone based payment scheme