Nokia plans to introduce in India next generation handsets based on Near Field Communication (NFC) technology allowing cell phone users to avail wide range of day-to-day consumer services by simply waving or touching the mobile phone.
With India allowing 3G-spectrum that will help build green-field pan-India communications infrastructure, Nokia is now working on a strategy to introduce high tech NFC-based hand sets that will dramatically change the lifestyle of cell phone users.
NFC is a short rage wireless technology that allows communications to take place between devices that either touch each other or are momentarily held close together.
Varied services
If your mobile phone is NFC-enabled you can avail wide range of consumer services like booking air or rail ticket, withdrawing money from ATM, booking tickets for movie or theatre or paying telephone or electricity bills etc by simply waving or touching your cell phone to the concerned NFC-enabled point-of-service counters.
Not only that your NFC-enabled mobile phone can be used as a travel card, business card and even credit card. “We visualize big potential for NFC-enabled handsets in India. We believe that NFC has the potential to change our life styles transforming everyday tasks of modern day to day life and making things easier”, Nokia Vice President (Devices Experiences) Waldemar Sakalus reporters here.
Only recently Nokia Growth Partners, a global equity fund set up by the Finnish telecom giant, decided to invest an additional $150 million for financial support to enterprises focused on India and China. A part of this fund is proposed to be spent on developing NFC technology in India.
Nokia’s Research & Development centre in Bangalore will be the nodal centre for introduction NFC technology in India, a high-ranking Nokia official indicated. Nokia has already launched NFC-enabled hand sets on commercial basis in selected cities of China in July 2007.
