How Close Is Proximity?
Part I: NFC Proximity Mobile Payments in 2009 Boston, MA — Jan. 07, 2010 — Plagued by unresolved technical and business issues, the global NFC market has been moving slowing over the past several years. The finalization of the NFC implementation standards, together with other technical issues, took much longer than people had expected, largely due to the business struggles between different industry groups. The global economic crisis started in 2007 also slowed down the industry’s effort to come up with a workable solution acceptable to different parties in the ecosystem. Even so, significant progresses are made on the technology front over the past two years. As NFC standards were finalized when the Single Wire Protocol (SWP) was adopted by ETSI in 2008, manufacturers of NFC chips, SIM cards, and handsets are finally able to move forward in developing the new generation of NFC solutions. But viable business model remains elusive and no major commercial roll-outs have been announced.
