By Eelco van de Wiel

The latest version of the Android SDK has full support for NFC functionalities.
NFC means Near Field Communication and allows mobile phones to communicate to nearby objects. Chances are that if you buy a smartphone towards the end of this year, and most certainly in 2012, it will be equipped with a NFC chip. This technological advancement introduces a new era in mobile communication as it allows mobile payments, location based mobile advertising and communication with local objects to launch a URL, call a number, open a map to a location or launch an  application. 

The NFC chip will replace all of the cards in your wallet and is expected to be the future payment medium. Google focussed their API on mobile payments and is working with MasterCard and Citigroup on a near field communication (NFC) based mobile payments system. 

Even though the technology has been around for a long time it’s only now that the large scale introduction is announced. The long delay has been a result of the economic crisis in combination with the large shifts in the operators - software - hardware powerfield. Now one of the major players, Google, included the NFC technology the technological shift finally takes place.

As happened with all previous technological developments it will take a long time for the leading design to emerge. The next period will be dominated by a power struggle among the big players in the ecommerce and payment playing field to gain the largest market share. As it took almost a decade to introduce the new PIN card in the Netherlands, it might also take as long for mobile payment to be fully supported. 

The image below shows a possible solution that uses RFID: 

Google earns over 1 billion dollars from mobile platforms in 2010.

“Mobile is on an annualized run rate of over $1 billion. This means the people who are accessing our products and services through their mobile phones are adding a $1 billion annually to our existing revenue streams. Clearly, this is the future of search in the Internet, more people in more countries coming online from these smartphones. Our mobile search queries have grown five times over the past couple of years. And of course, a lot more of those queries are now coming from Android phones.”

According to a Gartner research Android will have a market share of 30% (currently 18%) at the end of 2014 and becomes market leader. 

Every year the GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona is the place to be for everyone in the mobile business. All the new gadgets, applications and possibilities are exposed by the leading manufacturers and companies in the business. 

Some highlights and proceedings of the MWC 2010:

• Competition between operators, manufacturers and developers
  
  Mobile phone manufacturers increasingly have to share their revenues with software suppliers. Where the hardware as well as the software of the mobile phone used to be developed by the same manufacturer, now more and more of the market is dominated by the combination of a hardware manufacturer and a software developer like for example Windows Mobile and Google’s Android. The only function of operators become the transportation  of mobile data.
  
  This means that the revenue will be split between three different players: software producers earn for software and downloadable applications, operators for traffic and manufacturers solely for the hardware. There is an ongoing struggle between the three parties since they all want to gain a larger piece of the pie. We can see that from different initiatives that were introduced at the MWC:
  
  
  • The initiative of 24 large operators with over 3 billion customers across the globe have come together to launch an open international applications platform. This is an attempt to gain back the intitiave on application stores from the ones like Apple, Nokia and Microsoft.
    
    
  • The launch of the joint-developed operating system of Nokia and Intel called MeeGo. MeeGo replaces nokia’s current operating system and can be used for phones, tablets, TV’s and other mobile devices.
    
    
  • The launch of Google’s own Phone the Nexus one earlier this year.
  • The launch of the new Windows Mobile version (see below)
    
    
• 4G in the Netherlands
  
  4G comes to the Netherlands. 4G is a faster alternative to 3G, which means mobile internet will increase in speed. In a few months the frequencies will be auctioned. The Scandinavian countries already have LTE (one of the variants of 4G along with WiMax) but in the Netherlands it will be only available from 2012.
  
  
  
• Windows Phone 7:
  
  Windows launches a new version of it’s mobile operating system which is totally different from it’s predecessors. The windows-like environment of Windows mobile is replaced by a totally new, fresh and easy to use interface. Finally Windows creates an environment for mobile phones that is usable for everybody but in my opinion Windows again misses the boat since Apple and Android are way ahead..
• Google & Android
  
  A lot of new phones were launched based on Google’s Android operating system. Among those are Acer, Motorola, Sony Ericsson Xperia and HTC.
  
  This increases the power of Google and increases the market share (even by 100% in the last quarter) of Android which fits Google’s mobile strategy. Google expects that the mobile advertising market will be much larger than their current advertising market according to Eric Schmidt CEO of Google during his talk at the MWC. Mobile will be Google’s core priority.
  
  Maybe advertising is not the only opportunity Google aims at. Mobile payments also might be an interesting market for Google.
  
  
  
  
• Puma smartphone
  
  Puma launches a new mobile smartphone. The phone produced by Sagem has multiple special functions such as a compass, stopwatch, step-counter and GPS tracker and an altered operating system. The most special gimmick is the solar panel on the back.