Application types

Application types
Developers are now in a position to take hold of the NFC promise and maximize its
market potential within a wide range of products. It is evident that NFC promotes a
different set of applications and to a large extent doesn’t conflict too much with
RFID’s barcode replacement technology. It seems we can categorize NFC-based applications
into three groups, namely, (i) key based – this category of application uses NFC
as a key to unlock another service. For example, a so-called smart poster containing
NFC tags, which promote a new product or service. Simply touching your cellular
phone or PDA device against the embedded tag (or hotspot), would unlock the service
and transmit marketing data to your cellular device in seconds; (ii) peer-to-peer
applications. NFC is used to enable communication between two devices, such as a
cellular phone, PDA, camera, printer, set top box and so on. An example of this would  be a photograph taken with your mobile phone and then sent directly to your printer
by simply touching it with the phone; and (iii) pay and book applications. Very similar
to RFID, this area of NFC application is already growing. Many banks and cellular
operators are waking up to the idea of offering payment and ticketing applications
on phones and several credit card companies are currently trialing the technology in
Europe. Additionally, plans are already underway to trial NFC technology within cellular
phones to enable match passes within European football grounds. With NFC
founders Philips being an official sponsor of FIFA (TalkNFC.com) this is a clever
technology marketing alliance.