NFC: New Standards Will Foster a Raft of New Handsets, but There Is Still Work to Do

Author: Jonathan Collins, Principal Analyst, Wireless Healthcare and M2M

Published: 28 Mar 2008

Late in February, ETSI (the European Telecommunications Standards Institute) approved a key NFC handset standard in a move that clears the way for handset vendors to develop and deploy standardized NFC-enabled GSM handset designs. The move is a key step; with a single handset design standardized, the groundwork is now in place for the serious work of building and launching commercial applications. ABI Research believe that with the standards in place, we can expect to see more handset vendors bringing NFC-capable handsets to market over the next nine months as they vie to provide new full-featured models for trials and early-adopter NFC rollouts. The standards don’t mean that all the issues around the commercial rollout of NFC (that is, around business models and partnerships that we have addressed previously) have been resolved, but it does signal a firm foundation on which to build those rollouts.

The full text of this Insight is available to subscribers of the Mobile Money & NFC Research Service.

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