Japan’s No. 2 mobile operator, KDDI, plans to sell the first standard NFC phone in Japan, an NFC version of Samsung’s popular Galaxy S II Android phone.
KDDI has been pushing for standard NFC against its larger rival, NTT DoCoMo, which has been leading the roll out of contactless-mobile wallet phones supporting proprietary FeliCa technology from Sony. While standard NFC also supports FeliCa, NFC phones can’t be used on FeliCa terminals in Japan and Japanese consumers can’t use their FeliCa wallet phones on contactless terminals supporting types A and B of the international contactless standard, ISO/IEC 14443. DoCoMo has finally agreed to move to standard NFC and has formed a consortium with KDDI and No. 3 operator Softbank Mobile to coordinate the rollout. This will involve distributing hybrid phones supporting both standard NFC and FeliCa technology, enabling service providers to continue to use the FeliCa terminals. But KDDI wanted to kick off the NFC rollout early with the Galaxy S II, which only supports types A and B of the contactless standard.
* Trusted Service Manager: Defined loosely to include companies or other organizations securely distributing, provisioning and managing applications, generally over the air, on secure elements in NFC mobile phones; or licensing their platforms for this purpose.
N/A: Not available or not applicable.
Last update: Jan. 2012
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