Japanese Telcos on NFC
- The three main Japanese telcos–NTT DoCoMo, KDDI and Softbank–have now set up an NFC-dedicated consortium (the Japan Mobile NFC Consortium) to allow transitioning towards a dedicated standard and remedy the heterogeneity of mobile payment systems, unfavourable to customers’ and merchants’ adoption of these technologies and to the development of a suited business model.
- In addition to Sony’s FeliCa chips, two standards –NFC “type A” and “type B”– should enable mobile operators to access less expensive compatible mobile phones outside of Japan. This approach illustrates the evolution of Japanese carriers, who used to prefer national vendors and manufacturers. Nevertheless, imported open terminals are now particularly popular, but have to be modified to support FeliCa and the available mobile wallet (NTT DoCoMo’s Osaifu-Keitai).
- The Japanese mobile market is particularly mature, but now has to cope with the result of this precocity: the devices with which customers and acceptors are equipped do not respond to the emerging international standard criteria. Japan does not however look away from FeliCa which, over the years, has earned its market and has contributed to developing several international standards.
- Users and retailers should benefit from these evolutions and will no longer have to worry about cell phones compatibility. Banks, for their part, will be able to propose their apps to all mobile operators and address a larger range of customers.
- Worldwide, the number of Joint ventures of this kind is now increasing: JVs in the US, France, Sweden, in Spain and in the UK. Japan is then lining up on this overall trend.
- The large range of possible uses and financial profit that contactless solutions could generate are now pushing all players into working out common large scale deployments. Asia, in general, is now trying to take advantage of these technologies (see South Korea’s position– December 2011 Insight – see also the contactless initiatives launched in India).