IDTechEx first published a detailed report on NFC five years ago. In this article we share some of the findings in the new IDTechEx report, “Near Field Communication (NFC) 2014-2024.”
In the intervening years we find that mobile phones have remained by far the most important potential and actual focus of NFC. The technology is particularly suitable for them. Disappointingly, some people are still worrying about its speed compared to transport smart cards, though Mifare for Mobile from NXP gives transport card speeds. Some worry about the difficulty of using financial cards, including ones emulated in an NFC phone or tablet, in closed transport systems where it is not a single transaction but an entry-and-exit transaction with knowledge of location and therefore distance travelled on railways and subways in particular. However, solutions to this are already in use as with the Cubic scheme in Chicago. Others solve it other ways. Progress with transport systems is slow but the leader in transportation ticketing, Cubic Corporation tells us that, “a significant percentage of transportation ticketing will be by (NFC) mobile phones in future”.
Many trials of many potential uses of NFC continue to be created but they tend to be a poor indication of what happens at rollout. To say contactless cards are NFC is playing with words: they predate NFC and would succeed if NFC had never been invented. Let us look more closely at these and other aspects.
To learn our full insights read the article summarizing IDTechEx findings here.
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