NFC of Things

Near Field Communications, or NFC, is finally being widely adopted. Apple missed this train (the lack of NFC has been the biggest disappointment of the iPhone 5), but this has not stopped the market from adopting the technology.

Initially NFC was considered as the enabling technology for mobile payments. But this has not happened. Mobile payments require more than NFC, which is just a "transport" technology. Mobile payments require security and there is this ongoing tug-of-war about who owns the secure element: phone makers, OS makers, MNOs or banks? This is why we have contact-less credit cards (PayPass and PayWave: no ownership dispute there) and we cannot virtualize them in a phone (even if the phone has NFC circuitry).

But in the meantime NFC has found a way into consumer electronics market of various connected things. Things require connectivity. Connectivity needs to be set up. And it is not so obvious how to set up a thing, which wants to be connected, before it is connected. Things often (or always) lack displays and keyboards. There is no way to enter WiFi SSID and password to a thing that wants to connect via our home, password - protected WiFi. Of course there are workarounds. The most common with WiFi is the thing, when not configured, acts as an access point, we use a mobile phone to connect to this temporary network, only to select the target network and enter the password. The procedure is very common today, from Twine to Belkin WeMo, but is cumbersome enough to even drive a company out of the market (which was the case with Nabaztag). Bluetooth has not been able to spread beyond phones for the same reason. Pairing Bluetooth requires selecting a device from a list and entering a PIN code. Both screen and keyboard is needed for that.

NFC replaces the screen / keyboard interaction for pairing with a touch. It works by touching two objects (or things) together. When touched, NFC is used to transfer information: usually configuration data like passwords / security keys and other connection settings from one thing to the other. For this to work, one thing has to be an active (powered) NFC transceiver, and the other can be passive. It can even be powered off, because the active party generates magnetic field strong enough to be picked up by the passive party to power its own circuitry.

This means completely seamless procedure for users. Take two things, touch them together, and they are instantly configured to be connected, either as peers (like a phone to a wireless speaker) or as members of an infrastructure (WiFi clients). For Internet Of Things and all forms of wireless connectivity, NFC is the breakthrough enabler. Market players have already picked up this idea. Jabra makes wireless NFC headphones and Sony heralds the "Magic is just One-touch away!". It is indeed.