The near field communication technology will find its use in several day-to-day applications when prices of NFC-enabled handsets come down. NFC capability is now available only in phones priced above Rs 10,000. When the ecosystem is ready and when the prices come down further, the applications would be part of day-to-day transactions said D Shivakumar, senior vice president – sales (India, Middle East and Africa) of Nokia.
This seems clear hint about some WP8 device even going below the price of NFC enabled Lumia 610, as earlier indicated by Nokia. If you remember during Q2 2012 presentation, CEO Elop hinted that Nokia will go deeper than Lumia 610 in pricing with WP8. As you know the windows ecosystem will be NFC ready with launch of Windows Phone 8 version of OS.
In an interesting and important piece of news, Nokia seems to be pushing and establishing use of NFC in form of NFC Metro Rail ticketing in India. Nokia is in talks with most of the Metro Rail projects in the country for NFC enabled ticketing. Nokia has partnered PayMate for NFC solutions that would enable easy display, delivery and purchase of goods and services using a simple tap of a mobile phone. The same technology would be used for ticketing by tying up with banks.
“Most Metro Rail projects in the country are discussing the possibility of an NFC-based solution for ticketing with us. There is a strong intention on their part to deploy the solution so as to reduce long queues and the other hassles of getting train tickets. NFC coupled with mobile money would be the most suited solution for the same,” Shivakumar said.
Viral Oza, director marketing Nokia India said during the announcement of the tie up with PayMate: “To create awareness around this technology, we have deployed NFC chips with unique content across almost 1,000 Nokia outlets in the country. The consumer response to the ‘Just Tap’ with NFC feature on our smartphones has been very encouraging. We are confident of the potential of this technology in the future and are working closely to get the ecosystem ready for this technology.”
However, as a testimony to the development, the Chennai Metro Rail Ltd has invited bids from banks to participate in its tender for automatic fare collection system, on July 19. As part of the bid conditions, banks have to have tie ups with other banks to enable cashless transactions and also support NFC when it is introduced. The Delhi Metro Rail project is said to have started pilots of NFC-based ticketing.
Nokia will be officially launching Asha 305, Asha 306 and Asha 311 full-touch Asha range of phones tomorrow in India. Out of these Asha 305 is already available at official Nokia Store for a price of less than 5000 INR. Surprisingly, the official announcement is coming now. Rest the two phones will also be launched at a price below Rs 10,000.
Out of the three, Asha 305 will be a dual SIM phone and all the phone will come pre loaded with 40 games. Read our earlier articles for more about full-touch Asha 305, 306 and 311.
