Forum to promote near field communications

Nokia, Philips and Sony have combined to set up the Near Field Communication Forum to enable the use of touch-based interactions.

Nokia, Philips and Sony have combined to set up the Near Field Communication (NFC) Forum to enable the use of touch-based interactions in consumer electronics, mobile devices, PCs, smart objects and for payment purposes.

Touch-based interactions will allow users to access content and services in an intuitive way by touching smart objects and connecting devices just by holding them next to each other.

The new forum will promote implementation and standardisation of NFC technology to ensure interoperability between devices and services.

Consumers are seeking easier ways to interact with their immediate environment and to enable easy communication between their electronic devices and gain access to services.

The vision of the NFC Forum is to enable users to access content and services in an intuitive way.

To bring this vision to life, Nokia, Philips and Sony are now inviting other leading companies from mobile communications, consumer electronics, chip manufacturing, computing, media and entertainment, telecomms and payment services to join the NFC Forum.

"At Philips our focus is giving consumers easy access to information, entertainment and services - NFC does just that", said Scott McGregor, President and Chief Executive Officer, Philips Semiconductors.

"Enabling easy transfer of information between consumer devices from phone numbers to electronic transactions, NFC bridges today's connectivity gap and allows 'connected consumers' to interact with their environment.

By pushing the technology with the backing of an industry organisation such as the NFC Forum, NFC will soon open up a range of new opportunities for the consumer".

"Nokia sees touch-based interactions, enabled by near field communication technology, as an elegant way of bringing Nokia's 'life goes mobile' vision into reality", said Pertti Korhonen Chief-Technology Officer, Senior Vice President, Nokia.

"Touch is an intuitive and easy way to connect, collect and share with mobile devices.

It will not only enhance the experience of using current services but also create entirely new applications and value.

Nokia is looking forward to working with the other members to bring this exciting new user experience to the mobile world".

"Sony positions NFC as a new form of user interface technology for consumer electronics products, and will strongly promote integration of NFC into numerous products across a wide variety of industries", said Teruaki Aoki, Senior Executive Vice President, Sony Corp.

"The use of NFC technology in consumer electronics devices will increase opportunities for users to transfer data, implement secure transactions and download rich content.

We have high expectations that this will significantly enhance the convenience and enjoyability of products and services.

The activities of the NFC Forum will be to focus on ensuring interoperability among various devices which will be crucial for high acceptance of NFC technology, and Sony will proactively participate in these efforts".

NFC technology evolved from a combination of contactless identification (RFID) and interconnection technologies.

NFC operates in the 13.56MHz frequency range, over a distance of typically a few centimetres.

NFC technology is standardised in ISO18092, ECMA340 and ETSI TS102 190.

NFC is also compatible to the broadly established contactless smartcard infrastructure based on ISO14443 A, such as Philips Mifare technology, as well as Sony's FeliCa card.

Further information on the NFC Forum is available at http://www.nfc-forum.org.

Back to top