Rumors of Apple bringing in NFC enabled iPhone 5 later this year are catching more and more momentum.Near Field Communication (NFC) is a promising technology that might well change how we interact with our surroundings. Once more and more apps and parts of the ecosystem get on board this system, things would flow much faster. Apple considering or implementing NFC is a big deal as iOS has over a 100 million devices out there.
While LTE, larger display etc would keep showing up in the rumors land, NFC would mean a big change. Apple wouldn’t implement NFC like what Google/Samsung did with the Nexus S. They would surely have some announcements to go with it and thats interesting, very interesting. Would it be a carrier tied service or a banking tie-up? We can speculate plenty on what Apple can do with NFC, but for now the best we can do is wait and watch.
I have said before and I repeat, the mobile platforms race is about to be over in a year or two. The major mobile platforms like iOS, Android, WebOS, WP7, MeeGo etc would mature and be competitive in terms of UI and web capabilities. However what would make the difference is the ecosystem. A part of that is apps. But thats not all. We recently heard Bank of America working on mobile payments using NFC. Once each of these platforms have a few hundred million users, they would start pulling exclusive services like mobile payments and a technology like NFC would play a big role. The ecosytem wars have begun, Apple has the lead with apps, will they also make it with NFC?