July 2, 2004
Buy With A Wave Of A Phone
Somewhere in that long list of things that mobile phones were one day "supposed to become" was a replacement for the credit card. [ Forbes ]
"Sour Chhor wants to make it happen, and he's closer than you might expect. He's general manager of a group at Philips Electronics focused on developing a technology called near field communications (NFC) that is based on radio frequency identification (RFID) technology and could within a year start turning common mobile phones into the spendthrift's best friend.
Consider the following scenario: Walking down a street, you spot a poster advertising that you can buy your favorite artist's new single right then and there. All you have to do is hold your mobile phone up close to the poster, and the song downloads directly to the phone--which also happens to be a digital music player, for easy playback.
And why not use the phone to buy concert tickets too? Not only will the phone handle payment but it will also become the ticket. Wave it in front of the turnstile at the concert venue, and the phone gets you in the door, where it can also be used to buy a T-shirt.
"The nice thing about NFC is that it's so intuitive, there's almost nothing you need to learn to understand it," Chhor says. "It's like walking into a room and just talking to someone."
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