Open Market for NFC Innovations

I had a conversation yesterday with a gentleman who is with M:Metrics. M:Metrics provides statistics & data based on mobile media. Like many other companies, we at NetworkIP are looking to obtain some real-world data on the number of mobile phones available & that have been purchased with Near Field Communications (NFC) support. Come to find out that M:Metrics isn’t even tracking this data right now. The response from M:Metrics was that they are aware of NFC, but not directly measuring it currently because the market place is essentially zero. The market for these things is huge; as an example, take the search for data that many of us in the space are involved in.

Unfortunately what M:Metrics is saying is true. You’ll be hard pressed to find a NFC enabled mobile phone here in the U.S. I was happy to see Nokia release their 6131 model phone with NFC support in early 2007 & too my knowledge the 6131 remains the only mobile phone available with NFC here in the U.S.

We do know that Samsung played part in the NFC BART pilot conducted in San Francisco, CA earlier this year. Unfortunately I’m not aware of the model of phone used for this pilot. Maybe it was Samsung’s X700 which has been rumored to have NFC capabilities or possibly they used a SD chip with NFC capabilities such as the SDiD 1010 NFC SD card from Wireless Dynamics.

As more pilots like the BART pilot are conducted, both businesses & consumers are sure to see the value in NFC & we’ll see the number of mobile phones with NFC capabilities on the rise. Industry leaders suspect NFC will be widely adopted nearer end of 2009. The good news is that it’s not a question of “if”, but “when” it will happen.