Where is NFC?

By Shawn Smith,

Published on Sep 17, 2012   —   1 min read

Comment made on Ars Technica regarding what’s missing from the iPhone 5.

It’s been in other devices now for what? Almost a year? Hasn’t really taken off. On the e-payment side it’s hard to compete with swiping a credit card. How much easier can it get? For the other non-payment features NFC provides I think we’re looking at a repeat of QR codes. Nice idea but not many people use them and it’s not even clear NFC is the best way of doing those things due to the requirement of an extra radio and large low frequency antenna. Bluetooth, wifi-direct, and even just IP will provide a lot of the same functionality for ‘free’ with no extra parts required.

I’d also agree on the factors, so far, that have stopped NFC from becoming the next tech to push mobile payments into the real world.

I also mention this in my keynote speech (last few slides).

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