Predictions for NFC

NFC, or Near Field Communications, in the short-distance technology that hardware manufacturers and markets have been developing to make things like payment through waving your mobile phone possible. To date, one of the difficulties has been the lack of a common standard for the technology. Several competing standards have been used, just as there are several competing standards for mobile phone technology.

So if a mobile device uses a different standard than say a soft drink vending machine, the user will not be able to utilize their NFC capability to just wave his phone and buy a drink. Rumors are cropping up <http://www.cio.com/article/677549/IPhone_5_May_Get_IWallet_NFC_Functions_After_All?source=rss_mobile_wireless&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+cio%2Ffeed%2Fdrilldowntopic%2F3061+%28CIO.com+-+Mobile%2FWireless%29> that Apple is preparing its own version of NFC to allow users to make iPhone purchases via iTunes when encountering NFC devices. Whether the iPhone becomes the device that allows NFC to reach the tipping point or not, NFC is one of the best bets to be the next technology to make a mass market breakout.