With Apple’s Announcement of Core NFC being included in their upcoming iOS 11, the technology that has been available but underused for Android becomes available to everyone.
NFC, or Near Field Communications, NFC is a way for your phone to wirelessly interact with similar equipped devices within about 2 inches of each other. This is the technology that iPhone uses to manage payments via Apple Pay, along with similar Android-based interactions like Google Wallet and various access/security apps.
At Hallsten Innovations, we have been held back from device development because of the lack of iOS support of NFC. Now that the most popular smartphone brand has opened up access, this technology will gain a significant boost of adoption allowing the Internet of Things to further integrate with the connected world around us.
So what can we expect now that NFC will be part of iOS 11?
- Existing Developers and Apps that utilize NFC on Android devices (various payment tools, hotel room access) will be ported and made available for iPhone users. This will increase the public’s awareness of this technology and remove it from niche status of just the Android ecosystem.
- Hotels and other bookable rentals will embrace the concept of NFC as they can expect nearly every hotel guest to own an NFC capable iPhone or Android device. As such, individual hotel apps will fully integrate NFC into their check-in schemes.
- Products that can absorb the cost of an NFC tag into their packaging will do so. NFC tags may gain acceptance with a new generation of smartphone enabled consumers who will be more comfortable with the technology- and outperform the adoption rates of the QR Code.
- Beyond hotels, security may rely on NFC for human identification. Although the zippy corporate nametags are always in fashion, phone usage may soon replace.
- Gym equipment that reads your performance with specific sensors may offer NFC ports for workout downloads of everything from calories burned to heart rate.
Fastfood Selection (OK this is our projection)
If you’ve been in a KFC, Arby’s, McDonalds or your local dilly bar distiller, choices abound and menus can get hairy. Online/Mobile ordering is possible and very much exists, but choosing from sometimes 100s of choices from a tiny screen is just plain silly.
Instead of a kiosk, imagine a giant menu wall, almost like an overblown American Greetings Card rack, that showcases an entire menu with individual NFC bumps. No lines, just browsing individuals.
A user could place their nfc-app enabled phone nearest to the picture of the item they want to order, and bring it up on their screen. Ordering would be helpful to the customer, visible to children and others in the party NOT ordering, and would eliminate customer queues.
Beautiful eh? This is the vision of NFC that we have… it’s going to change the world of how humanity interacts with devices and systems.
The new need for NFC enabled devices
To be able to read and interact with NFC enabled devices, doors, menus and boats… all of these devices will need to be NFC-enabled.
And that is where Hallsten Innovations comes in.
The Hallsten Innovations tagline is “Developing First-Mile Electronic IoT Solutions to-spec, within budget, and on-time.” While we create new products from scratch, much of what we do is add electronics to existing devices to make them smarter.
If you have an NFC application that needs developed consider contacting Hallsten Innovations for a free NFC and device development consultation.