One of the biggest areas of speculation these days about the iPhone 5 is whether it will have near-field communications (NFC), the technology used both for in-store payments and for getting information from RFID tags inside advertisements, products and more. With lots of people talking about NFC, many have assumed that iPhone5 would have NFC. But there have been a lot of indications that it won't.
Today NXP, one of the biggest makers of NFC technology, lowered drastically their projections of how many NFC-capable phones will ship in 2011, from 100 million to 40 million.
My question is simple: What changed that caused NXP to lower their projections?
In the past few weeks we've seen lots of strong moves in the NFC area. This includes strong consolidation of efforts of major players in the traditional payment space, along with several initiatives from strong players in the on-line payment space (1, 2). And a big NFC tag printing company released big news as well.
Presumably NXP knows things that we don't know. Might this be confirmation that the iPhone 5 will not have NFC? Or is another major player backing off from its NFC plans?
Today NXP, one of the biggest makers of NFC technology, lowered drastically their projections of how many NFC-capable phones will ship in 2011, from 100 million to 40 million.
My question is simple: What changed that caused NXP to lower their projections?
In the past few weeks we've seen lots of strong moves in the NFC area. This includes strong consolidation of efforts of major players in the traditional payment space, along with several initiatives from strong players in the on-line payment space (1, 2). And a big NFC tag printing company released big news as well.
Presumably NXP knows things that we don't know. Might this be confirmation that the iPhone 5 will not have NFC? Or is another major player backing off from its NFC plans?