London Calling: Is NFC the next Bluetooth?

London Calling: Is NFC the next Bluetooth?

NXP Semiconductors NV (Eindhoven, The Netherlands) is on a run rate to do nearly $1 billion of annual sales revenue in identification. When I saw that statistic I did a double take.

In the second quarter of 2012 NXP's identification business unit did $234 million sales. That's 21.4 percent of NXP's total sales in the quarter and up 20.6 percent on the same quarter a year before. And a significant part of that identification market is based on near field communications (NFC) technology which builds on radio frequency identification (RFID) technology.

The two technologies between them cover such applications as electronic passports, contactless bank cards, transportation ticketing cards, ID tags for retail, commercial and industrial applications and their readers and mobile applications and NXP claims it is number one in every one of these markets.

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NXP reckons in 2012 about 100 million cell phones will ship with NFC, according to Alexander Rensink, director of strategic marketing at NXP's identification business unit. Put another way nine out of the top ten smartphone vendors are shipping NFC-enabled devices and NXP supplies eight out of the nine. The result is 90 percent penetration for NXP in NFC-enabled mobile handsets.

Rensink puts it another way. Between 2011 and 2016 2.2 billion NFC-enabled devices will ship and the largest sector by far will be handsets. NXP already has its NFC chips designed into 200 smartphones and tablet computers and only about 80 (40 percent) of them are in volume production, Rensink said.

Nice work if you can get it.

And the big driver for NFC on-board mobile phones is the prospect of using the cell phone for monetary transactions; an application that resolutely refuses to happen.

Rensink is adamant there is a lot more to NFC than just providing a medium of monetary transfer. "NFC can be used in coupling the physical world to the virtual world." He outlines the possibilities: stickers on posters and magazine adverts that users touch their phones to for more information and URLs; stickers on toys and action figures that can enable an online experience based on the physical toy; NFC in white goods and smart clothing.






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TAG:near field communications Bluetooth mobile radio application killer NXP semiconductor