The market for NFC solutions is evolving in a way that is very different than from what most recent media coverage implies. Vendors that buy into this portrayal and plan their business around this information risk strategic missteps and may fail to capitalize on real present-day NFC opportunities. During this QuickCast, VDC's John Shuster discusses the recent hype around NFC and the implications that coverage has for suppliers based on VDC's recent findings, which suggest the excitement around NFC may be premature.
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Limited infrastructure and device availabilitySlow adoptionDifficult to justify/Lack of education Low supply-side revenuesFacilitated adoption in APAC and EMEA due to existing infrastructure, higher user comfort levels and government initiatives.Majority of revenues from horizontal applications like payment, ticketing, marketing and access controlIncreased enterprise investment in NFC solutions for internal (i.e., non customer-facing) applications, including physical security/access control, logical/network security/access control, workforce monitoring/management and tracking/tracing applications.The emergence of alternative (i.e., non-smartphone) NFC device form factors during 2012 and beyond will further broaden NFC’s appeal as well as the potential use cases it can serve—both for enterprise and consumer end users.Governmental investment in NFC initiatives in certain country markets (e.g., Korea, France) will help drive regional contactless infrastructure deployment, application development and adoption.NFC application opportunities/use cases range from the very simple (P2P, pairing, information access) to the more complex (contactless payment, e-commerce). VDC expects most near-term activity will be related to applications that are relatively simple to deploy, do not require the cooperation of multiple stakeholders/decision makers and are deployed within the confines of a “closed loop” environment. Certainly, contactless payment and other commerce applications represent a tremendous opportunity for NFC; however, in most regions, VDC expects that these applications will remain challenged by barriers related to stakeholder cooperation and the availability of contactless infrastructure.
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