1 Feb 2012
Apple and NFC? I don’t think so.. my bet is 70% against. Great that Apple can keep us all guessing. Why put a 5th radio in the iPhone? AND hand carriers control of SE. There is just no upside for Apple here. NFC would not enhance their wonderful mobile customer experience… it may even kill their Apple/App Store/Apple ID/Payment Instrument advantage.
It would be smarter if they would buy Square… payments belong in the cloud… not locked in the phone. All you really need at a POS is an Irrefutable ID. In a Square scenario, Apple could leap frog everyone in customer adoption and enable every iPhone owner to pay with their voice and GPS location ( Apple has payment instruments tied to every iTunes account). The gap in this scenario is merchant adoption, existing merchant processor agreements/hardware, and retailer reconciliation (if multiple processors). Apple, if I were you I would sit down w/ Square, FirstData, TSYS, … and see what could be done. NFC requires coordination of too many parties.. a late follower would be a much better place to be. Your top risk is that consumers will buy phones based on mobile wallet. Your short term strategy? I pay with my iPhone today (see pic).
Don’t get me wrong, NFC can work.. but the carriers have proven inept at managing a platform business which would incent the participation of many businesses, allowing all to make money. Instead they operate as a toll bridge, but expect to take a portion of the goods in transit. If you operate as a toll bridge you are a dumb pipe… period. It just does not take much intelligence to run a control business, sure it is complex to build the bridge.. But it even more complex to coordinate the logistics of the world’s commerce. The carriers focus on control is killing the prospects for NFC’s success, as they attempt to act like an orchestrator (requesting a % of goods in transit) but have the ability of a toll collector.
Commerce will find another path… one of least resistance. This is what Apple should do as well. NFC is just a radio… one whos standards are largely controlled by banks, mobile operators and card networks. Why would retailers want to participate here at all? We should not act to enrich the complexity of payment networks, or wireless ones, but rather form new networks that are retailer and consumer friendly. Bluetooth, wifi, gps, voice, facial recognition, sms, .. all can do the job NFC does. We will not see harmony here over the next 20 years, particularly as the only payment instrument in a mobile wallet is a 300bps+ credit card.
Why is Japan successful? because they have a dominant carrier that built a business model.. same in Singapore and Korea… in the rest of world.. chaos will reign until someone delivers retailer and consumer value.
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/12/01/30/mastercard_acknowledges_it_needs_apple_to_bring_nfc_payments_into_the_mainstream_.html
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Update 3 April 2013
My bet on next version of iPhone? Broadcom’s BCM43341 chip
Broadcom has launched the industry’s first quad-combo chip. The BCM43341 combines NFC, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and FM radio on one chip and, says Broadcom, “offers OEMs unmatched size, power and cost advantages.”
A second new product is a single card solution that pairs a BCM20793 NFC controller as used in the Google Nexus 4 with an 802.11ac (5G) WiFi radio and is aimed at high end mobile phones and devices.
Does that mean the next iPhone will have NFC? yep.. but not in the way we think about it today.
http://tomnoyes.wordpress.com/2011/02/03/isis-platform-ecosystem-or-desert/
http://tomnoyes.wordpress.com/2011/12/05/isis-delay/
http://tomnoyes.wordpress.com/2011/10/26/apples-commerce-future-square/
http://tomnoyes.wordpress.com/2011/01/26/apple-and-nfc/