Will it, won’t it?
This week kicked off with rumours that the iPhone 5 will shun Near Field Communications (NFC) but now new rumours have emerged that the iPhone will tout this feature after all.
Just this Monday it was reported that Apple's iPhone 5, which is rumoured to launch this summer, would not include NFC as the company was concerned by the 'lack of a clear standard across the industry'.
However, Forbes has reported that an anonymous entrepreneur working on a secret NFC product told it he reckons the iPhone 5 will have NFC and he was led to believe it will from a friend who works at Apple.
While it might sound like just another rumour, the entrepreneur told Forbes that makers of NFC readers who he has been in touch with concerning his own product also expect the iPhone 5 to have NFC.
He reportedly said that these manufacturers are preparing for an increase in NFC traffic this summer, which they expect to be driven by the release of the new iPhone.
Many commentators were surprised by the earlier rumour of Apple shunning NFC as it has been rumoured to be a fixture in the iPhone 5 for months and Google has made it clear it is committed to the technology.
Indeed,Google's chief exec Eric Schmidt has reportedly said that NFC will ‘revolutionise payments' while Frost & Sullivan consulting group predicted that payments via NFC will reach €100bn by 2015, according to The Independent.
It seems remarkable that a company like Apple would elect to miss out on such big predictions especially as NFC was recently backed by mobile industry body GSMA and Google's Nexus S handset already has a head-start in the NFC area.
Chairman of GSMA, Franco Bernabe reportedly said NFC represents "an important innovation opportunity, and will facilitate a wide range of services and applications".
However, in order to be runaway success, a universal standard for NFC has to be agreed upon and networks plus phone manufacturers are apparently undecided on such a standard, so it is stalemate.
Carolina Milanesi, an analyst at Gartner told the newspaper: "Nokia has talked about this for years and nothing happened. When Google and Apple talk about it, NFC will happen."
