Friday, May 27, 2011

The iPhone 5 News Blog News Feed

The iPhone 5 News Blog News Feed

Will Apple Match Google’s Just- Announced Wallet NFC Technology In IPhone 5 or 4S?

Posted: 27 May 2011 04:17 AM PDT


It’s still an open question as to whether Apple is going to include Near Field Communications (NFC) electronic payment technology that would allow users to pay bills and make purchases with the iPhone 5. However, what is now clear is that Google is beating Apple to market with NFC.

Sprint announced today that it’s entering a partnership with Google to launch Google Wallet, an application using NFC technology to make your Android phone your wallet. Google Wallet, projected to be available “this summer,” will allow eligible Sprint customers will be able to tap and pay while they shop, with Sprint the first carrier and Google’s Nexus S 4G the first phone to deliver this service.

That is unless Apple actually did manage to introduce an iPhone 5 with NFC support at the World Wide Developer’s Conference (WWDC) in a couple of weeks, which I seriously doubt is going to happen.

"We are pleased to join Google in offering this cutting-edge capability that lets you leave the house with just your phone, and tap and pay to shop, dine out and go to the movies," commented Sprint senior vice president of Product Fared Adib in a media release. "We are proud that Nexus S 4G is the first smartphone with Google Wallet and pleased that our customers can be the first to experience the service.”

Google Wallet is expected to work initially with the MasterCardPayPass network that is accepted at 124,000 merchants nationally. Existing Citi MasterCard holders can add their cards to Google Wallet over the air. Google also will support a pre-paid card that can be funded to make payments. In addition to quick payments, users also will be able to redeem offers and even scan loyalty cards – all with a single tap on their phone – with participating retailers (with no additional fees added).

Google Wallet has been designed for an open commerce ecosystem, and Google says it will eventually hold many if not all of the cards you keep in your leather wallet today, but able to do so much more than a traditional wallet ever could. For example storing thousands of payment cards and Google Offers but without the bulk, along with your loyalty cards, gift cards, receipts, boarding passes, tickets, and eventually even your keys all seamlessly synced to your handset, with every offer and loyalty point redeemed automatically with a single tap via NFC.

Apple NFC is presumably coming soon. Apple last winter hired of NFC expert Benjamin Vigier — formerly product manager for mobile wallet, payment and NFC at mobile payments specialists mFoundry and who also was a key player in development of both PayPal’s Mobile service and Starbucks’ barcode-based mobile payments service. Apple has also reportedly filed two NFC-related patents in the past three years. The first one, filed in September 2008, was for concert, entertainment and sports ticketing. The second, in August 2009,was for peer-to-peer financial transaction devices. Apple has also patented techniques for incorporating an NFC antenna in a touch screen, and for NFC-enabled iPods, games controllers, TVs and iPhones. Clearly Apple is up to something with NFC technology.

However, in mid-May Business Insider’s Jay Yarow posted a report contending that Apple’s next iPhone, which he suggests will be called the 4S, will not support NFC citing a note to investors from Wall Street research firm Bernstein.

Yarow observed that rumors have been churning as to whether or not Apple will include NFC in the next iPhone, but observed that for the most part, the technology isn’t that widespread yet in the U.S. so Apple’s alleged decision to skip NFC on the next iPhone refresh probably isn’t a big deal. However, with the Sprint/Google Wallet announcement, I would say that it’s just become a bigger deal.

Apple would also seem to have plenty of incentive to get NFC up and running on the iPhone, since Yarow cites the Bernstein note projecting that NFC can add $15-$30 billion in incremental revenue for high end mobile companies, so Apple, with 20% of the high end mobile market, could end up with $4-$9 billion in extra revenue.

However, Apple presumably has its reasons for waiting to hold back, with one possibly being that they want to bulletproof the security aspects as much as possible. NFC capability will exacerbate security concerns if your phone gets lost or is stolen, being as NFC is essentially just an embedded RFID chip interfacing with a reader. However, it can be also safely assumed that Apple will be working to incorporate ever more efficient and effective security safeguards into its mobile devices, possibly including measures like fingerprint recognition and retinal scanning, that will have to be satisfied before the machine will function, all of which takes time.

Charles W. Moore is a columnist for PBCentral and Applelinks, Appletell, and LowEndMac, and an exclusive iPhone news contributor for the iPhone 5 News Blog.