Windows Mobile Louisville

Over at On10.net, there’s an article about mobile phones becoming electronic wallets.  My first thought at the title of the article was, “Mine already is! I use eWallet!”, and there are numerous other similar apps which act as digital wallets (Spb Wallet, Code Wallet, etc).

But there’s more to the story, which is quite interesting:

“Analysts predict that within the next five years, one third of mobile phones will act as electronic wallets, electronic tickets, and access control devices, and Windows Mobile will be at the forefront of this move.   Just recently, a deal with RFID vendor Sirit was made, soon to bring Sirit’s NFC (near field communication) “contactless” technology to aid in the development of Windows Mobile applications.   Although there aren’t specifics on what this partnership will bring, we can speculate as what we do know is that NFC is a radio-based technology that enables the exchange of data between devices less than a foot apart.   This type of technology is already at use in public transportation and payment systems, so maybe in the future we’ll be paying for items with our phone instead of our debit cards!”

In Japan, they are already doing similar things, but they’re always a notch or two ahead of the U.S. in stuff like this.  It might take some time to reach mass-appeal, but I believe we’ll see this sooner than later in our devices!

Tags: near field communication, NFC, RFID, wallet

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 15th, 2008 at 2:46 pm and is filed under Software News, The Latest. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.