New Berg Insight research identifies technologies, such as NFC, are enabling a completely new segment of mobile applications, which are proximity services or local services, but the industry first needs to settle several critical technical and pedagogic issues. Even though the market is still guarded and fragmented, in the long term consumers will not accept having multiple devices, cards, accounts, and passwords. A long-term pragmatic view and initial cooperation is necessary to enable the paradigm shift that will morph the mobile phone into a terminal for communicating with intelligent objects in the environment.
“Local contact-less services are already available to over 50 million mobile users that can shop, travel, and get information by just waving their phones over readers”, said Sabine Ehlers, associate analyst, Berg Insight. In Japan for example the service is well-established and a great success in terms of number of readers installed, service partners linked and subscriber terminals in use. When it comes to actually applying the technology however, the mass of consumers apparently need time to change deep-rooted behaviors. In Europe, the development is held back by uncertainty about business models and the lack of coordination between different players. Especially mobile operators regard the new business field with caution due to its lack of obvious revenues for network owners. Berg Insight does, however, identify several important contributions from the operators, and reasons why they cannot afford to stay outside this exciting new field. The report gives a thorough technical background to the contact-less mobile field, identifies the best strategies for initial services and how to progress from there, and discusses experiences from a large number of trials and services from around the world.
About Berg Insight
Berg Insight, the analyst firm, offers premier business intelligence to the telecom industry. They produce concise reports providing key facts and strategic insights about pivotal developments in their focus areas. Their vision is to be the most valuable source of intelligence for their customers.