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Wallet phones: Sony and NXP double team chips
Interoperability for all...

By Jo Best

Published: Monday 20 November 2006

Former Philips' chip unit NXP and Sony have announced they are to create a joint venture to promote the adoption of mobile NFC - a goal that trade association the GSMA has also announced it will be working on.

In a memorandum of understanding, the pair announced their joint venture will be set up in the middle of next year and will be charged with creating a secure NFC chip that works with various flavours of NFC-compatible phones, such as Sony's FeliCa and NXP's Mifare systems.

NFC is a type of short-range wireless technology, similar to that used in London Underground's Oyster card, for making contactless payments, often for ticketing or making small purchases, via a mobile handset.

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According to NXP and Sony, consumers with phones sporting the chip will be able to buy all sorts of services from different providers as a result, although both will continue to develop their respective platforms separately.

The GSM Association is also cheerleading for NFC, reporting that operators making up 40 per cent of the world's subscribers are working on the contactless payments. The GSMA is also "co-ordinating the NFC initiative to encourage a common approach to the implementation of NFC technology in mobile phones".

The association is calling for common NFC standards, which it believes will lead to interoperability and therefore mass market take-up.

Such widespread adoption has so far proved elusive for NFC. Despite big name backing, analysts have recently reduced a forecast on chip shipments citing a lack of imaginative services as one reason take-up has been low to date.

So far, there have been a handful of pilots using the mobile technology and a rollout of contactless payments in Germany, where users pay for travel by tapping their mobiles onto NFC readers.