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 Gemalto has announced its long-held agreement to serve as the trusted service manager for the U.S.-based Isis joint venture, which plans to launch its NFC platform next year.
Spain-based Telefónica said it has chosen Germany-based Giesecke & Devrient as its trusted service manager as it gears up to introduce NFC services in Europe “over the next few months.”
Smart card association Eurosmart forecasts that vendors will ship 80 million to 120 million secure elements in 2012, as chip and card vendors begin their first significant shipments of NFC-enabled SIMs and embedded secure elements for NFC phones.
The senior director of financial services for Best Buy, the largest consumer electronics chain in the United States, said she believes NFC holds great promise but fears costs will be daunting, standards are insufficient and the chain’s customer data might be used to benefit competitors.
Russia’s largest mobile operator, MTS, and its second largest oil company, Lukoil, plan to enable consumers to pay at the gasoline pumps with a tap of their phones.
Vendors seeking to break the dominance of Mifare technology in the contactless transit-ticketing market plan to show samples of the first products complying with their new Cipurse specification in November.
Norway’s largest bank, DnB NOR, and its biggest mobile operator, Telenor, have launched a new NFC trial in the capital Oslo, putting a MasterCard PayPass application on SIM cards from the telco.
Germany-based Giesecke & Devrient has announced it has won a contract from Deutsche Telekom to develop NFC-enabled SIM cards for the telco group's NFC wallet rollouts.
Boosted by the results of its just-completed trial in Sweden enabling 28 frequent hotel guests to download room keys to their NFC phones and tap to enter their rooms, vendor Assa Abloy said it is seeking to expand its Mobile Keys service.
