Hybrid Chips on the Japanese Market
- FeliCa Networks (JV founded by Sony and NTT DoCoMo) has announced two partnerships with Samsung and NXP on the development of hybrid chips able to support two rival contactless standards. These alliances should help the Japanese market migrate to international standards, through making the use of contactless solutions easier without impacting now operational solutions (mainly NTT DoCoMo’s m-wallet –Osaifu-Keitai– with embedded FeliCa chip for instance).
- Combining FeliCa with Samsung or NXP technologies on a single chip could enable mobile carriers to use in place infrastructures and step by step migrate to a global standard while ensuring continuity of services.
- Samsung should be in charge of developing FeliCa / NFC-SAM (Secure Application Module) chips as well as an ISO/IEC 14443 and 18092-compliant NFC controller. NXP mentions an NFC / FeliCa chip which would also support Mifare ticketing app.
- Both these manufacturers should propose hybrid chips in 2013.
- FeliCa’s implantation and prevalence in its native country could now hinder the development of contactless solutions in Japan considering its incompatibility with imported terminals. Also, its standard does not allow Japanese customers to make contactless transactions abroad. Until recently, FeliCa Networks has been in control of all chips, middleware and TSM to be found in Japanese m-wallets.
- In December 2011, the major Japanese mobile carriers (NTT DoCoMo, KDDI and Softbank), have founded the Japan Mobile NFC Consortium, and announced their joint project to migrate from FeliCa to international “Type A” and “Type B” NFC contactless standards (see January 2012 Insight). These successive announcements illustrate an actual will, on FeliCa’s part, to comply with the consortium’s recommendations and secure its market shares.