Laurent shares latest status on NFC market of 2012 and the coming change of industries.

One of our colleague sent me this link the other day and told me he wanted to buying this phone, after all the NFC phones in the office that had failed to tempt him.

Sony Ericsson Smart Tag

It’s a nice commercial I have to say, and good work for Sony Ericsson. I think it is a product that corresponds to a “real” need, the convenience, plus the need of playing cool (to poke the screen for a half minute or to tap on a tag?). You don’t have to find someone with another NFC phone to try the NFC experience, NFC in solo is just as magical as in dual. I understand that this kind of use case is probably too simple to look at for technical people, but sometimes that’s all it takes.

Being an ordinary, lazy end-user, if I have to spend more than 5 minutes to set up my credit card in the phone, or go to the bank to do something, just for paying with mobile phone, I would be happy to use a plastic card. The NFC technology can not be a selling point; it is the service or product of NFC that will win customers.

It is no longer a picture of future life. Taiwanese users can call taxi and collect loyalty points with Nokia’s new NFC phones since Mid-September!

It has been a (long) while since last article. Easycard continues to gain popularity after the card issuance volume surpassed number of habitants in February, now about 27 million of cards are in circulation. Although it is still not a surprising ratio compared to Octopus card in Hong Kong (7 million residents, 24 million cards issued!), Easy card and Taiwanese operators are already planning on the next step toward NFC.

Nonetheless, it can never be bad to start with something less complicated. Along with the NFC device launch, Nokia Taiwan cooperated with the biggest taxi company on the island, Taiwan Taxi, to launch NFC call taxi services and a series of promotional campaign, including NFC loyalty point collecting by tags deployed inside taxis circulating in Taipei.  (See news here)

Toro developed the mobile wallet app, but didn’t participate much in the marketing campaign. And here’s what came as a surprise when we took taxi one day:

The poster says you need to collect three colors to win the price and the three models supported, etc. But the only thing we were concerned about was where they put the tag!

Here it is, printed with some descriptions, sticking in the back of the poster. Oh, no, I will never tell you what color this tag is!

It feels quite unreal to see the poster in a random taxi you picked up on the street. NFC is right here! Although some might say, it’s still easier to find a taxi on the street than a call taxi tag, or the loyalty thing can’t really compete with other factors that affect one’s phone purchasing decision…etc.

However, it’s just a start, and the situation is that this is a handset maker launching their own NFC mobile wallet for phones which don’t support secure element. It will surely not be the only mobile wallet on the island. And NFC will always need to come out with services, so just take a seat, and get ready for the wallet war!

Since April 2, 2010, you can pay at Starbucks Coffee with your Taipei Metro Card (EasyCard).

Wait… you can also pay in the 4,500 7-ELEVEN stores in Taiwan, in the 2,500 Family Mart store or 1,500 OK-Mart stores, at the parking lots, directly on the park meter (!), in the taxi, at MacDonald’s, at the movies, etc you name it! Basically you can pay everywhere with your EasyCard. This card used to be for the exclusive use of the Taipei Metro-Bus system. It has gradually moved out of the metro stations and spread to parkings; and from April 2010 onwards, not only will it be accepted at most retailers’ counters, but moreover on the whole Taiwanese territory. Octopus does that already! Granted, but we are talking about nearly 25 million people here (Hong Kong counts 7 million people). Advertising for the new EasyCard is massive and ubiquitous these days. They’d better invest in communication if they want to reach the 95% penetration rate that Octopus has been able to achieve in 6 years. Visa? Master? Anything to say?

Barcelona, Spain and Taipei, Taiwan – February 15, 2010. Toro Development Ldt. (TORO) and Giesecke & Devrient (G&D) are working together to develop a cutting-edge offering for mobile financial applications based on G&D’s Mobile Security Card and TORO’s Akami mobile platform. Both companies are contributing their respective expertise in hardware, firmware, middleware, mobile software, and system architecture to create a platform offering system integrators, financial service providers, and retailers fast time to market for a proven secure mobile solution. The solution will be on show in the G&D Pavilion (Avenue AV 103) at the Mobile World Congress from February 15 to 18, 2010, in Barcelona.

This new offering addresses the booming market of secure applications on mobile phones. It brings to the market a series of stand-alone solutions for secure applications that will not necessarily evolve toward near-field communication (NFC), such as mobile banking, mobile remittance and mobile ATM.

The Mobile Security Card originates from Giesecke & Devrient Secure Flash Solutions (G&D SFS), a joint venture between G&D and the flash controller supplier Phison Electronics. “G&D SFS offers secure micro-SD cards as one among a number of secure elements on the mobile phone. This is a strong sign to the financial industry that their applications can securely run on mobile. Independently from the longer-term agreements that banks and mobile network operators (MNOs) may be putting in place in preparation of NFC, banks can already educate their customers to use their mobile as a secure terminal for their daily banking operations”, says Laurent Renard, CEO of TORO.

“G&D and TORO complement each other in offering secure and convenient mobile financial applications. TORO is a company that understands the importance of both, security and the mobile user experience, and help get the best out of our products. They already make it easy, convenient, and very appealing to users to operate secure applications from mobile devices”, says Marcus Rosin, Managing Director of GD SFS.

TORO SELECTED AS FINALIST FOR SESAMES INNOVATION AWARD

Akami™ competes for best mobile application.

Hong Kong, November 9^th 2009 – TORO, the pure player for NFC mobile platform development, is pleased to announce that their product AKAMI™ as been selected as a finalist for the prestigious SESAMES INNOVATION AWARDS in the MOBILE category.

“We are proud to have been chosen as a finalist from among the 309 applications competing for the SESAMES Innovation Awards, and we salute the jury members for short-listing a startup company alongside the 3 industry giants Gemalto, Oberthur and NXP,” said Laurent Renard, Chief Executive Officer, Toro Development Limited. “Our engineers have been developing the Akami™ software suite with a true vision of the distribution of NFC services to end-users”, he added. “Our competitors for the SESAMES – but partners in business – have made the NFC technology work, and now TORO will help focus on the NFC user-experience and user relationship management, a key success factor for NFC applications adoption”.

About Akami™:

Akami™ is a complete mobile software suite that provides a User Management System for the distribution to end-users of NFC services, whether secure (i.e. payment, transport, loyalty, tickets, etc.) or non-secure (i.e. marketing, CRM, social network, games, etc.). Akami™ is a market-ready solution that comprises a mobile client (with versions for all mobile platforms: J2ME, WM, Symbian, etc.), a widget system, a SDK, and a full-featured back-office system with APIs for 3^rd parties. Akami™ addresses the markets of mobile operators and/or TSMs.

About TORO:

TORO is a startup company founded in 2007 to serve the emerging NFC ecosystem, and offer a compelling user-experience across mobile, web and the reality. TORO is positioned as the crossroads of smartcard, mobile and GUI design. TORO is also the founder and organizer of the monthly Mobile Monday events in Taipei, Taiwan. Toro Development Limited is headquartered in Hong Kong, with offices in Taipei and Paris. For more information, please visit www.toro-asia.com

We have the great pleasure to inform the NFC ecosystem that Akami, TORO’s main product, was selected among 23 candidates for the SESAMES Awards at CARTES 2009 in the category MOBILE. The winner will be unveiled on November 16th at the Théâtre de Paris, the night before CARTES 2009 starts. TORO is competing with heavyweight players in the NFC ecosystem: Oberthur Technologies, Gemalto and NXP.

Well, we are not sure of the criteria of the jury, let us just hope they like innovative startups and they understand that winning a SESAMES Award for a small (but promising) startup like TORO can make a difference, whereas it is just a matter of corporate pride for big companies.

We’ll keep you posted!!!

“NOW SAMPLING: NXP’s PN544 complies with the SWP and HCI specifications”

NXP announced this June 2nd that their PN544 NFC chipset is finally ready and available for sampling. That is the piece of information that the entire NFC ecosystem was waiting for since the GSMA officially announced that they backed Gemalto’s proposal to turn the SIM card into THE secure element! Now, handset makers will be able to start their NFC phone developments and finally flowd the market with SWP compliant handsets. Phones, phones, phones! It is said in the small NFC world that a carrier needs to propose a minimum of 3 NFC handsets to users to start launching their NFC services. That might well be (at long last) the beginning of it all.

Let’s not be too optimistic though, and let’s not underestimate the capacity of the NFC ecosystem to find themselves new problems that will delay the NFC market a little more. PN544 is almost a famous brand name, let’s hope it will be remembered as a main milestone for NFC.

I would like to comment on ping.ping, Belgacom’s initiative to launch NFC mobile payment in Belgium. They launched ping.ping a little over a month ago (after duly buying Tunz, originally a SMS-based mobile payment software start-up), and it did not make much noise, although I think what they are doing is a very smart move.

While everyone is awaiting the ever-delayed NFC phones, Belgacom’s team decided to make a bold move and whip the market a bit. They launched ping.ping (named after the shortest man on the planet – Chinese), which, for the end user, is a service that materializes as a RFID sticker on his phone, and an account on www.pingping.be.

The RFID sticker (Mifare DES-fire) is only an identifier. Merchants do have a NFC phone, but only to acquire the transaction. Merchants have a merchant ID, they the amount on they ping.ping mobile interface, and the whole batch of data goes online directly to the Belgacom servers. If the merchant’s service is activated for the user, and if the ping.ping account is loaded with enough cash, then the transaction is accepted. Yes, everything is done online. From the ping.ping website, end-users can chose which services/where they want to pay with ping.ping (parking, supermarkets, fast-food, etc.), and which account of theirs should be debited (bank account, Proximus phone bill, etc.). [How it works.pdf]

This is not our vision of NFC services, but still, Belgacom is creating a brand name, deploying services, creating habits, and – most importantly- growing a user base. And this is the beauty of the service: ping.ping sales force goes to a service provider, says a parking management company for example, they sign a deal, and Belgacom immediately grow their ping.ping user base by 30,000 people. These end-users trade-in their contactless parking card for a ping.ping sticker… They then can decide, once logged on the website, to subscribe to more ping.ping services.

So Belgacom is turning the hindrance created by the lack of phones into a competitive advantage: the longer the delay for NFC phones to be available, the larger the ping.ping user base. And when NFC phones are available in numbers, they’ll kindly propose their users to switch to “mobile ping.ping”. Brilliant! …and inexpensive (ping.ping pilot= 500 Mifare stickers vs. MNOs giving away 500 Nokia 6212 to their customers)