NFC has a lot to offer - not only to participants of the last MobileMonday in Dusseldorf

NFC or „Near Field Communication is not just another technology that lets you connect enabled devices over a (very) short distance, just like Bluetooth and RFID do. NFC has some features to offer that will affect and alter the ways we already use our mobiles quite substantially. In other words: a really cool technology.

 

NFC will not only enable us to exchange business-cards and even pictures and music via an ad-hoc wireless network by bringing two devices close enough to each other. “Enough” by the way means something like 1 or 2 centimeters, or rather a touch. Think “Bump”, the successful iPhone and Android app.

 

We’ll even be paying our goods in the supermarket by NFC, not standing in line at the cashier but by “checking out” through a “scan-gate” that reads the RFID tagged products and by holding our NFC enabled mobile to a respective “touchpoint” at this gate. That’s it. You’re done in a snap. What, if not that’s cool?

 

The same will be true for checking into a trade-show or a theater, a train or an airplane. You can even open and start your car by using the mighty NFC chip on your mobile. And mind you: not the mobile network, with all it’s apparent risks and drawbacks, but only the transmission to the closest NFC reader-device. Those are only a few of the more obvious applications you might think of.

 

But those applications do also rise some serious questions, as well. Questions about privacy and the protection of our personal data and profiles left at those readers. Questions about the security of the payments you made there. Questions about the over-all security of your “digital wallet” on your mobile phone in general. What if the device is hacked, lost or stolen? Who will cover all those risks?

 

And these were exactly the questions to ask Klaus Jansen-Knor, senior VP at Cellpoint Mobile, a mobile software and consulting firm from Miami Beach, who introduced the crowd to all the security aspects of NFC as well as the unexpectedly complex eco-system of mobile payment.  Whereas security is “safe enough” for even the financial industry, the building of the eco-system will require substantial efforts of all parties involved.

 

Next to enter center-stage was Manchester born Martin Scattergood who serves as CEO of SES RFID Solutions GmbH in Dusseldorf. Martin showed us that NFC is technically nothing but an application of RFID specifications in the really short contact range. And he surprised us all with some unusual visions of future NFC use-cases like a social data-collection in something he called a “data wiki platform”.

 

Last of the speakers was Nokia’s Torsten Wichura, who serves the handset-maker as a business manager for social location services. Consequently his presentation did not focus that much on NFC enabled Nokia mobile phones which have been available for already a couple of years, but on all kinds of mobile location based services from gaming to shopping.

 

Whereas even some of the more than usual and really interesting questions had to be left unanswered during the regular Q’n A sessions, many mobilists took the opportunity and joined the speakers in an extensive networking part in Grey’s cozy “Pause” café. If you couldn’t make to this Mobile Monday in Dusseldorf be sure to have missed an unusually interesting and remarkable event.