NFC

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Description

Near Field Communication Technology or NFC, is a short-range wireless technology mainly aimed at usage in mobile phones. It is jointly developed by Sony and NXP.

It was approved as an ISO/IEC standard on December 8, 2003. It was approved as an ECMA standard earlier on. On March 18, 2004 Nokia, Sony and NXP formed NFC-forum to advance NFC development.

Near Field Communication Technology holds the promise of bringing true mobility to consumer electronics in an intuitive and psychologically comfortable way since the devices can "hand-shake" (talk to each other) only when brought literally into touching distance.

A patent licensing program for NFC is currently under development by Via Licensing Corporation, an independent subsidiary of Dolby Laboratories.

So far fourteen mobile network operators, who together represent 40% of the global mobile market back NFC and are working together to develop NFC applications. They are Bouygues Télécom, China Mobile, Cingular Wireless, KPN, Mobilkom Austria, Orange, SFR, SK Telecom, Telefonica Móviles España, Telenor, TeliaSonera, Telecom Italia Mobile (TIM), Vodafone and 3. These 14 firms are part of the GSM Association, which represents 700 mobile operators around the world. ref.