Sony and Global HID to unify FeliCa and NFC laptop reader technologies

Sony and Global HID are coyly batting their eyelashes at each other over a memorandum of intent to jointly develop an embedded contactless smart card reader platform for laptops. The idea is to create a single reader compatible with Sony’s popular FeliCa solution in Japan as well as NFC, HID Global’s own iCLASS, and more. As a refresher, about 315 million FeliCa cards are in circulation worldwide with another 67 million FeliCa-capable mobile phones in Japan used for electronic payments, access, interactive advertising, and membership rewards systems. Hell, Sony’s even got a FeliCa reading remote control . The dark arts of Near Field Communication have been given a boost recently with support from Nokia and the US carriers AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile . Even Apple is rumored to be getting in on the action. So let’s ink a contract already fellas, anything that will unify all these “standards” into a common embedded laptop reader sounds like a good idea to us. Continue reading Sony and Global HID to unify FeliCa and NFC laptop reader technologies Sony and Global HID to unify FeliCa and NFC laptop reader technologies originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 12 Oct 2010 06:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink

Posted by on October 12, 2010. Filed under News, Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry