Near Field Communication – How Widespread Will It Become?

Anyone who has traveled to Japan (or South Korea)  lately may have noticed that the Japanese use their phones to pay many types of bills.  With Near Field Communications chips embedded in Japanese cell phones, one can swipe their cell phone near a POS terminal and either have their cell phone bill charged for the price of the item or perhaps have it deducted directly from a bank account.

Mobile payments such as this are appearing in various locations: One can now use their Japanese mobile phones as ATM cards at Japanese ATM machines  to withdraw cash from their bank accounts; Japanese Taxis will soon accept mobile phone payments; at some gasoline stations in Japan, one can now buy gas via a swipe of a mobile phone; and Japanese can pay a restaurant tab using a mobile phone at some restaurants.  These are just a few of the examples of use.

This capability is enabled by NFC (“Near Field Communications”).  NFC operates at 13.56MHz and has data throughput up to 424kbit/sec over distances no longer than 4cm.  NFC is capable of both read and write and works between NFC chips embedded in some cell phones and contactless POS (“Point Of Sale”) terminals.

NFC in Japan is so popular that even Soft Bank in Japan, the exclusive Japanese carrier for the Apple iPhone, has started offering NFC stickers to attach to the back of the iPhone 4 to enable NFC capability on the iPhone, which has yet to include NFC capability internal to the handset.

Will NFC Adoption Occur in the U.S.?

The issue with the US or any other country adopting Mobile Payments is that it involves a fairly complex ecosystem.  Putting NFC chips into handsets is the “easy” part.  But in addition to this, mobile payments needs to be supported by mobile operators, the banking industry, retailers and consumers.  In the past, there has not been much motivation in the US to make this happen.

Times, however, may be changing.

Mobile Operators: US operators AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile USA have formed a joint venture called ISIS that is working with Barclay’s Barclaycard US entity to grow the adoption of NFC in the US.  These are supposed to go commercially live in mid-2012.

Handset Vendors: NFC handsets are currently not available in most markets, but Nokia and Samsung have been among the first to announce NFC-capable handsets, and other handset vendors will likely follow.

Banking:  Mobile carriers need to sign credit issuers to support their mobile payment services.  These relationships are being built with Barclays and they are working with mobile operators to enable mobile payments.

Retailers: Retailers will likely need to make a significant investment in installing the NFC POS equipment in their stores.  Will they be willing to make such an investment when credit and debit cards are already widely used?  This will largely depend on the benefit to them.  If there is consumer pull for use of Mobile payments, retailers will make the investment.  Without the consumer pull, it is unlikely.

Consumers: The key to the future of NFC in the US is whether there is any perceived benefit of NFC/Mobile Payments by consumers versus the current system of credit/debit cards.  In order for banks and operators to make this system work, the industry should focus on new capabilities of NFC that credit/debit cards cannot address, while stressing ease of use.  With such new capabilities, features and incremental ease of use, consumers will  start to desire Mobile Payments, creating the pull needed for NFC and mobile payments to take off globally.

What is your opinion?  Feel free to post a comment.

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Sony Announces “Next Generation Portable” NGP

It’s official – Sony announced the next generation of its Play Station Portable, codenamed NGP.

Sony's NGP

The NGP will focus on several key concepts: Revolutionary User Interface, Social Connectivity, Location-Based Entertainment, Converging Real and Virtual Reality.

Specs: Quad-Core ARM Cortex A9 processor, 5″ multi-touch OLED display with 960 x 544 resolution, dual analog sticks, 3G, WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, rear-mounted multi-touch touchpad, accelerometer/gyroscope/electronic compass, built-in stereo speakers, microphone, and both front and rear-facing cameras.

Games will reside on new Flash media.

It is unclear when the NGP will be launched, but it will occur this year.  Likely Sony announced this early in the year to let would-be Nintendo 3DS purchasers that a new Sony handheld will be coming out later in the year.  Nintendo’s new 3DS is scheduled for release in the U.S. in the March timeframe.

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Sony’s PSP2 Rumored to Support 3G Wireless and Have OLED Display

Nikkei claims that Sony’s PSP will include 3G Wireless support as well as an active OLED display.  The 3G service will allow users to play on-line games as well as download movies and games, but will not include traditional voice phone calls (though it is unclear whether VoIP services like Skype will be supported).

Nikkei mentions that in Japan, the service provider will be NTT DoCoMo but there is no mention of support from international carriers.

Depending on Sony’s implementation of the OLED display, this could lead to gorgeous display capability with wide viewing angles and reduced power consumption.  The devil will be in the implementation details, and therefore it is too early to say whether Sony’s OLED display will be stunning or just an evolutionary improvement.

Stay tuned – Sony is scheduled to unveil the PSP2 on January 27!

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Comcast to Stream Live TV to Apple iPad and Android Tablets

Traditional cable TV and satellite TV companies feel the pressure as their subscribers are becoming increasingly more mobile.  They are beginning to compete with internet content providers such as Hulu and Netflix.  As such, rather than face the threat of losing subscribers over time, they are beginning to embrace streaming live TV and on-demand TV to portable devices and PCs.

The latest announcement came on Jan 5 when Comcast announced plans to stream live TV in the home  to the iPad later this year  for their subscribers.  For now, they are limiting this service only to the home, though they do plan to offer 3,000 hours of on-demand content on the iPad that can be viewed in any location using their Xfinity application.

“Live streaming and the play now feature on our Xfinity TV app are two important pieces of our strategy to deliver any content to any device, any time,” Comcast Chief Executive Brian Roberts said in a statement.

Last year, Echostar, the parent company of Dish Network, began offering the capability to watch their Live TV on any internet connected appliance such as smart phones, tablet PCs or notebooks.  Through their acquisition of Sling Media, the inventor of Sling Box, a Dish Network subscriber can either use their newest “Sling Loaded” ViP 922 DVR, or attach a sling adapter to the USB port of the older ViP 722 DVR.  Combined with an app that loads on the iPhone or a PC, Live TV and on-demand video can be streamed to these mobile devices anywhere.

As for DirectTV, they offer a less elegant solution: Their Sat-Go device marries a 17 inch LCD display with their satellite receiver and antenna in a folding case for $499.  I imagine this is an interim solution as not many people will opt for spending another $499 when their competitors are taking advantage of streaming over the internet to their existing mobile devices.

We are truly becoming a mobile, on-demand society – expect to see more such developments over the next couple of years.

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PVR WW Unit Shipments to Exceed 50M in 2014 – Instat

According to InStat, PVR shipments will exceed 50M units globally by 2014, fueled by demand to time-shift TV programming .  Historically, most shipments have been to just a few countries, but PVRs are becoming more popular now in Latin America and Eastern Europe.  This trend will help fuel the PVR growth.

PVR-enabled satellite set-top boxes are the largest PVR product segment followed by cable set top boxes.  In 2009, Motorola was the leading PVR product manufacturer with over 4.9M units shipped.

In the mid-term, I expect to see continued growth in the STB market.  However, it will be interesting to see how the advent of internet connected media appliances will impact the STB market.  Undoubtedly, more TVs, STBs, DVRs and such will integrate internet connectivity in order to be able to display on-line content.  Will there be a battle between on-line content vs. traditional broadcast content?  Will traditional broadcast content start to decline as a result?  If so, how will that impact the PVR market assuming you can stream content from the internet?  Or will there still be a desire by consumers to download video from the internet to the PVR/STB, in which case integration of functionality will preserve this market for the long term?

Feel free to post your comments on this article.

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