NFC Application Development for Android

INTRODUCTION
MOBILE PHONE TECHNOLOGY has been in a race in recent years to integrate new technologies
and services, and the actors involved are all striving to be in the leading group that proposes
new suggestions to the users. Innovative additional services entice users, who try to beat, or
at least catch up with the people around them. Young people are especially keen to be part of
such competition. Adults, on the other hand, aim to use the most effi cient services to make
their lives easier — and to be a little bit admired at the same time.
In terms of the appetite for using new technologies, companies do not lag behind the users.
They are aware that companies that take the lead in promoting new technologies by embedding
them in new services and offering them to the users will come out ahead, and that this
is extremely important in today’s competitive world. Most companies try to propose new
services themselves, if possible, or by a minimal number of companies working together if it
is not. They try to entice the user by offering them services with low costs, and enhanced with
additional features.
Until recently, Near Field Communication (NFC) was not known at all. In just in a few years
it has been introduced with great enthusiasm by organizations including governmental departments,
research centers, and companies.
There are two major areas in which NFC has the potential for success. The fi rst is its technological
suffi ciency; the other is the ecosystem agreement by the actors in the game. These are
very much interrelated. As the actors become convinced about the success of the new model,
they invest more resources to develop it; and as new technical improvements take place, the
ecosystem becomes more established and ready for the boom. When one actor invests more
money in this option, that actor becomes more eager to make agreements with other actors in
order to recoup their funding and achieve a better return on investment (RoI). When all the
factors are analyzed, it might be confi dently suggested that an NFC boom is now about to start.
As a short-range wireless communication technology that potentially facilitates the mobile
phone usage of billions of people over the world, NFC offers an enormous number of use
cases — including credit cards, debit cards, loyalty cards, car keys, and access keys to hotels,
offi ces, and houses — and has the potential eventually to integrate all such materials into one
single mobile phone. NFC is already having an enormous impact on the fi nancial ecosystem,
as well as on mobile technology throughout the world. Mobile phone manufacturers, mobile
network operators (MNOs), fi nancial institutions such as banks, and information technology
fi rms are performing R&D activities to increase their share of the pie as much as possible.
NFC has become a real innovation in today’s mobile technology. Despite the fact that the technical
structure of NFC is so simple, it offers a huge array of services, which is very important
when you consider the ecosystem point of view. Potentially, it promises a vast number of ways
to reach mobile phone users. Payment seems the foremost option for attempting to internalize
NFC technology to the portfolio of promising services. Loyalty is another attractive way