Taiwan-based chip maker MStar Semiconductor announced today it is supplying NFC technology to Russia-based phone maker Fly for one or more handsets for the European market to be released as early as next month.
Raiffeisen Bank International, one of Austria’s largest banks, is planning to launch contactless-mobile payment with microSD cards and an iPhone attachment.
Samsung Electronics has confirmed it has an NFC version of its Galaxy Note, though that comes as no surprise to operators in South Korea, which have been selling the tablet-smartphone hybrid with NFC inside for about two months.
NFC chip supplier Inside Secure has released a new version of its NFC software stack, as it seeks to break rival NXP Semiconductors’ dominance of the market for NFC chips in Android phones.
Microsoft is requiring device makers to include a “visual mark” for tablets and PCs supporting NFC and running the software giant’s forthcoming Windows 8 operating system.
Japan’s second largest mobile operator, KDDI, said it would launch Japan’s first mobile NFC service late this month with the Samsung Galaxy S II–though the service will start out small because of the lack of phones that support both standard NFC and Japan's proprietary FeliCa technology, as well as Japan's nearly nonexistent infrastructure of standard contactless readers.
Large Spanish retail bank La Caixa will begin rolling out 1 million contactless cards along with more than 15,000 point-of-sale terminals and 500 contactless ATMs in Barcelona this month.
The SIMalliance trade group and GlobalPlatform standards organization say they are working on what they predict will become a “de-facto standard” for the way apps on NFC phones communicate with secure elements.
Sony Ericsson has announced two NFC-enabled Android smartphones and NFC tags for its Xperia series, touting NFC as enabling consumers to share content, as well as “an increasing number of NFC applications.”
U.S.-based Intel, as expected, is planning to incorporate NFC technology into chip designs for future ultrabook computers, the vice president and general manager of the chip maker’s PC group said Monday.
France-based Inside Contactless plans to acquire the smart card chip business of Atmel Corp., enabling the struggling contactless and NFC chip supplier to enter new markets, including chips for EMV banking cards, even SIMs, NFC Times has learned.
