NFC - About to change the face of Mobile, Internet and Marketing
Near Field Communication has been around for a long time, but its use is about to change. It essentially allows people to connect two physical objects together for example two toys, or a phone and kitchenware and these two, otherwise fairly boring objects will communicate to each other and perform some sort of action.
An ideal situation would be to have an NFC enabled phone and rub it up against a toy in a toy store. The two objects (phone & toy) would have to have an RFID chip built in. The phone would then perform some sort of action such as play a video, show more information, show what your friends have said about the toy or send it via Facebook as a virtual gift.
This technology creates limitless creative possibilities and while this might sound like a wet dream from a Sci-Fi film geek, it's actually possible to do this right now. RFID chips are becoming cheap and ubiquitous, just think of the Oyster card.
There is one crucial element missing and that is mainstream adoption from mobile phone manufacturers. However, this is about to change and it will start with the iPhone. Apple have apparently been shopping around for NFC manufacturers for some time and will include it in their next generation iPhone. As soon as Apple do this expect the rest of the tech world to catch on and before we know it, most phones will have this capability.
This wave could happen within 6-12 months and our capabilities as marketers, manufacturers and product designers are going to change drastically.
I can't wait for this! It's definitely going to make my job more interesting!
