Mobile Technology
Is NFC finally set to deliver?
Is this the year that Near Field Communication will finally get to reshape the world of commercial and social interaction? Jörg Suchy believes it could be
T
he world waited expectantly whilst 2011 was heralded as the year of Near Field Communication (NFC) mass deployment, however the industry as well as consumers still appear to be holding their breath, as they await the revolution. NFC promises many opportunities for new business models, involving many players across different industries. However, depending on their respective positions in the emerging NFC business ecosystem, the individual expectations and the derived technological requirements vary substantially. But there are now clear signs that a process is under way, which will reshape the world of commercial and social interaction as we know it.
Handset manufacturers and Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) have already demonstrated a strong commitment to launch NFC phones as well as NFC related applications into the market. In 2011 alone, we have seen the arrival of the Google Nexus S as well as the Samsung Galaxy S II and other smartphones with NFC Chip technology inside, which are all shipping now. Standards have been created to cover application management; security measures have been defined and implemented as well as trusted service manager concepts that have been proven as being operational during several field trials.
One question that is still being asked is whether the NFC phones and applications actually support the services that users want, and what will be the key enabler to this mass adoption? Will NFC be used mostly through the ‘mobile wallet’ or will more non-payment applications such as loyalty schemes and social media pave the way to market take up?
Research suggests that by 2015 we could have anything up to 700 million NFC enabled phones globally, but if that is to happen, what is needed to enable future applications? Today, the industry suggests we already have an open standard within the market
26 February 2012
to facilitate user services, but when we look closer at the reality in 2011, is this really the case? We also need to admit we have not yet found the application to unlock the market potential, but we must start looking for the key enabler that will truly provide the platform to propel NFC into 2012.
Simple, yet focused Assessing reactions and feedback from market participants, Samsung is under the impression that user demands with regards to their NFC enabled phones are actually simple yet focused. They centre around four key areas, security and privacy, processes surrounding the phone being lost or stolen, simplicity with contracts with no duplication of information, but possibly most importantly, users want a phone that is interoperable with all services now and in the future. The payment application has long been thought of as the key driver of NFC, but the key enabler and the question of security have consistently divided experts when discussing the best host solution for the technology. Historically the SIM Card/Universal Integrated Circuit Card (UICC) was the preferred platform to host the secure application, but more recently, additional solutions have been introduced to handsets. Such solutions embedded in the handset fulfil the required security standards for the payment application, but have the potential to cause interoperability issues for applications that are linked to the payment.
As an industry we put a lot of discussion into which model should be adopted to make NFC secure for the users, but the reality is that consumers will not care about how it is achieved - they will just want to use the application. Currently the NFC industry cannot guarantee that every phone will be able to run every NFC service and we run the risk of dramatically reducing the
Components in Electronics levels of
interoperability based on NFC
implementations that
don’t support open standards. Users do care about security of their data though and that’s where a secure element in the UICC makes a lot of sense, as a card can easily be removed if a phone is sold or transferred to another user. If the secure element is embedded into the phone itself, it becomes difficult to know for sure whether the transaction information is all securely deleted.
When it comes to using NFC for a payment service, companies understand the need for the technology to have the highest security measures. There will be user control through things such as PIN services, with expectations that PIN protection for the phone and apps will be as secure as chip and PIN services for debit and credit cards. Of course, not all NFC applications need to have the same levels of security as for making payments, however, the more control you place with the user to amend and monitor their usage of the NFC services on their phones, the more inclined they will be to explore and use the functionality available to them.
Contactless ticketing Aside from payment, we see both the transportation and social media networks as having the most potential to build the largest initial consumer base for NFC. With transportation especially, there is a lot of industry movement to break the
dominance of proprietary technology in the contactless transit-ticketing market through the Open Standard for Public Transport Alliance (OSPT). As more vendors sign up and with its first specification launched this year, we move closer to more freedom in this sector, driving increased quality of service and functionality for the user. We see these channels being particularly
appropriate to NFC due to the high number of addressable customers as well as the existing infrastructure for information sharing. Information sharing can and does happen within seconds and as a result this delivers direct commercial benefit to organisations encouraging NFC through advertisement and market analysis, whilst providing direct marketing opportunities accessible through customer profiles. We expect users will utilise the NFC service to share where they are, to touch tags at interesting points as well as sharing what they like at restaurants and events etc. This is a small step from the current functionality of a lot of social media interactions, such as 4 Square and Facebook check-ins for example and will, therefore, be second nature for many already.
NFC as a payment method will never
replace things like cash or payment cards, but will be the key application to introducing the technology into the broad mobile user market. However through the use of the UICC model, we can ensure open standards and full interoperability and security for users to ensure they fully utilise the NFC capability to suit their needs and interests within their handset, ensuring higher levels of adoption and mass market penetration.
Samsung Electronics |
www.samsung.com
Jörg Suchy is Senior Manager Strategic Business Development for chip card and NFC for EMEA, Samsung Semiconductor Europe
www.cieonline.co.uk
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48