Suggested New Year’s Resolution for Google: “Must Find a New Wallet Strategy.”

The announcement Wednesday by the big mobile operator trade group, the GSM Association, proclaiming increased “momentum” for SIM-based NFC services is, in fact, largely a defensive move.

Even as Google sends out its “brand ambassadors” to catch video images of consumers gushing as they tap to pay for the first time with the Google Wallet, doubts are growing that the Web giant will be able to make this a mass-market service.

The release yesterday by the Isis telco joint venture that six major phone makers “will introduce NFC-enabled mobile devices that implement Isis’ NFC and technology standards,” shouldn’t be taken as an endorsement by the phone makers.

The story of NFC handsets for 2011 is shaping up to be one of lower-cost phones.

Google’s planned acquisition of Motorola’s mobile phone business not only gives the Web giant control of a major handset manufacturer, it also offers Google a way to control the secure chips in more NFC phones.

The slashing by Netherlands-based chip maker NXP Semiconductors of its NFC phone forecast for 2011 demonstrates just how complex the business case for NFC rollouts can be.

In just the past few weeks, major mobile operators in the United Kingdom and Denmark have announced joint ventures to roll out NFC services.

Google has unveiled its much anticipated NFC mobile wallet and, as expected, we learned that it is much more than just an app for Android phones.

We’ve been told recently by some big NFC players that the industry is focusing too much on applications that use card emulation, that is, those that enable the phone to act like a contactless card to do payment, ticketing and access control.