Mobile Industry Events Archive
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NFC
Sony, NXP Announce Mobile Wallet JV
Technology companies and mobile operators joined forces on Monday to plan a global standard for electronic wallets in mobile phones. Sony Corp. from Japan and Netherlands-based NXP Semiconductors said they will create a joint venture, to be established by the middle of next year, that will plan, develop, produce and market a secure chip that will include both companies’ contactless chip card formats: Mifare and FeliCa.
Bouygues Telecom Testing NFC
Bouygues Telecom is testing a travel card integrated into a mobile phone in a trial covering the entire Paris mass transit authority (RATP) and Transilien SNCF suburban transit network in the Paris region. The experiment is the fruit of a cooperative venture with Gemalto for the SIM cards, NEC for the mobile handsets and Inside Contactless for the NFC contactless components. Tests carried out by Bouygues Telecom and the RATP between July and October have already validated many technical aspects. Transilien SNCF has decided to join in the next phase of the trial, which will involve some 100 test customers over a three-month period.
NFC Forum Issues Specifications
The NFC Forum, a non-profit industry association advancing the use of near field communication (NFC) technology, has announced the publication of its first four specifications. NFC technology is a short-range, standards-based wireless connectivity technology which allows consumers to perform safe contactless transactions, access digital content and connect electronic devices with a single touch. The NFC Forum’s Sponsor Members include: HP, MasterCard, Microsoft, Nokia, NEC, Panasonic, Renesas, Philips Electronics, Samsung, Sony Corp., Texas Instruments and Visa Intl.
JCB to Trial NFC in Netherlands
JCB, the Japan-based payment card company, says it will trial a Near Field Communication (NFC)-based mobile-phone payment service in Amsterdam beginning this autumn, according to an online article. The company says it is conducting the pilot because it sees payment applications on mobile handsets as a way to convert small-value transactions to its card scheme. Seven other companies are involved in the pilot, providing chip, personalization services, payment terminals, the phones and transaction processing.
Major Mobile Commerce Trials Announced
A group of major m-commerce companies announced a large-scale U.S. trial last week to include contactless payment, mobile content and premium arena services at Philips Arena in Atlanta, Georgia. The companies claim the trial will be the first large-scale test of next-generation mobile-phone applications in North America. The grouping includes Chase, Cingular Wireless, Nokia, Philips, Visa USA and others. The contactless payment functionality will be based on Near Field Communication (NFC) technology first developed by Sony and Philips. Other NFC trials are underway in Germany and France.
Wireless Watchers will know that the Sony/Philips NFC technology is also powering the super-successful “FeliCa”-branded mobile contactless payment services in Japan and has been adopted by NTT DoCoMo, KDDI and Vodafone as the de facto market standard for m-commerce, e-wallets, transportation and other peer-to-peer data transfer services. Sony first deployed NFC on the Octopus card in Hong Kong in 1997 and rolled their mobile handset trial ran in Japan in December 2003 — see WWJ video here. Today, over 7 million FeliCa-enabled phones have already been sold by DoCoMo alone.
One might think the two-year jump on deployment and commercial experience, not to mention brand equity, in Japan would motivate Sony to transplant an obvious success story from Tokyo to markets elsewhere. Instead, it looks like the wheel is being reinvented all over again.