Sony is showing that it’s got the “touch” — at least with its new One Touch tech.

Sony showed off its One Touch technology at the Consumer Electronics Show. It’s based on near-field communications (NFC). With One Touch, you tap your phone to another device and automatically establish a connection. Once you do that, you can begin a data transfer. If you tap your phone’s NFC chip to the same spot on an audio player, the audio player will start playing the song on your mobile device. If you tap the phone to a TV remote, you can transfer a photo from your smartphone to the TV screen. The same happens with a video.

NFC has a short range of just a few centimeters. Once you establish the connection, the devices complete the data transfer using either Bluetooth or Wi-Fi Direct, depending on what is built into your consumer electronics gear. The transfer of one screen to another is known as remote mirroring, and it was a very popular trend at CES. The trend should really help people who want to show YouTube videos or family pictures on a big-screen TV. The Sony One Touch feature will also work with a backup device. And with One Touch, you will no longer have to manually pair an audio headset or ear piece. You just pair them via One Touch.

Of course, it only works with Sony devices, not across a bunch of manufacturers. When the day comes when you can use NFC across manufacturers, it will truly be useful.

Here’s a video demo below.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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More than 1 million Android mobile devices are shipping each week with a technology called near-field communications (NFC), which allows you to tap your phone to another a device and transfer data instantly.

But that’s not fast enough for chip maker Broadcom. Today, the Irvine, Calif.-based company said it is introducing a new chip at the upcoming 2013 International Consumer Electronics Show that lowers the cost of NFC. It does so by packing the NFC capability within a chip that has a total of four radios, including Bluetooth, FM radio, Wi-Fi, and NFC. By packing several features together, Broadcom is able to reduce the overall price of every feature on the chip.

NFC is a short-range technology that allows someone to tap a phone with an NFC chip against another device with an NFC chip and establish a data link. You could, for instance, transfer a video from a smartphone to a tablet in an instant by tapping them together lightly.

The new Broadcom chip will be available in early 2013. NFC will enable new applications such as mobile payments, which are expected to grow from $4.2 billion in completed transactions in 2012 to $100 billion in 2016, according to ABI Research. John Devlin, an analyst at market researcher ABI, said, “We predict that over three and a half billion NFC-enabled devices will ship over the next five years, opening up huge market opportunities for companies like Broadcom. As a leader in wireless combination technology and with strong existing OEM relationships, Broadcom is well positioned to capitalize on this growth in smartphones and other consumer electronic devices.”

Broadcom also launched a single-card solution that combines its 5G Wi-Fi chip with a stand-alone NFC chip. NFC is expected to be used in game controllers (it’s currently used in the Nintendo Wii U tablet), TVs, remote controls, computer keyboards, mice, headsets, printers and more. One cool use is tapping a smartphone on a TV to transfer a video to the TV.

Photo via Shutterstock

Tomorrow, the Paris-based company that built MasterCard’s PayPass SDK and counts McDonald’s and Reebok among its mobile commerce clients will release the Airtag Kit, a full collection of everything developers need to start building mobile payment apps.

MasterCard’s PayPass technology already enables swipeless credit card use: tap the card on the reader and go. Now the credit card giant, with the help of Airtag, is extending the same technology to NFC-enabled phones.

“The Airtag kit is the second part of our partnership with MasterCard, and contains all of the hardware and software needed to build and test PayPass apps, including resources for the developer community,” Airtag chief executive Jérémie Leroyer, who has moved to the company’s New York offices, told me this morning.

The hardware in the Airtag Kit includes a Samsung Galaxy S III, a USB contactless card reader which simulates an NFC point-of-sale terminal, five SIM cards (UICCs) that include EMV chips similar to those in secure PIN-enabled credit cards, and two demo sales tags to simulate NFC-enabled merchandise. In addition, tutorials, manuals, and forums are available to help developers get started.

Source: Airtag

The Airtag mobile payments developer kit

The kit retails for $4,550, which includes one year of access to the developer program. The developer program alone is $3,250, which suggests the hardware is valued at around $1,300.

With the kit, a developer will be able to create apps for mobile payments incorporating NFC technologies, such as the capability to order online and pick-up in-store without having to use a credit card, or simply payment at point of sale. But at those prices, not every startup will be able to afford one — certainly not on Y Combinator-type money.

Whenever NFC comes up, the inevitable question also arises: What about the iPhone?

“It’s very difficult to guess what is going to be in a new version of the iPhone,” Leroyer said, accurately. “But we didn’t expect NFC in the iPhone 5 … usually what Apple does is let others go into the market, see what they’re doing, and then bring out a version of the technology a year later.”

However, Airtag likes what Apple is doing with Passbook — especially the geofencing — and uses it in the Go McDo product the company built for McDonald’s. NFC does enable better security, Leroyer told me, and the company does expect Apple to add NFC capability in iPhone’s next major iteration.

And he welcomes Apple’s entry into the market:

“NFC is very powerful, but very complex. We need players like Apple to simplify the ecosystem, and simply NFC development. That’s where we want to go, and we share this ambition with MasterCard.”

Some, including Seth Priebatsch, founder of SCVNGR and mobile payments company LevelUp, might say be careful what you wish for.

photo credit: 401(K) 2012 via photopin cc

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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The long awaited mobile payments service Isis is set to debut in September, according to a Bloomberg report. But it’s tough to muster much excitement when the core technology behind Isis, near-field communication (NFC), almost seems more like a fantasy today than when it was a hot mobile payments buzzword years ago.

Perhaps it’s because we’ve seen legitimate mobile payments solutions launch and thrive without NFC. Take Square’s mobile wallet app, which you can use to pay for purchases with your phone without the need for NFC hardware. Even PayPal has been exploring alternative methods of mobile payments with its point of sale solution.

Most damning for NFC are the major partnerships both Square and PayPal have recently landed. Square’s teaming up with Starbucks to entirely replace the coffee shop’s credit card processor, and its app will also work with existing Starbucks scanners at the register (again, no need for NFC). That deal also led Starbucks to invest $25 million in Square.

PayPal, meanwhile, just announced a partnership with Discover, which would bring PayPal payments to more than 7,000 Discover merchants in the U.S.

NFC received plenty of hype several years ago as the golden child of mobile payments, which led to the formation of Isis in late 2010. But since then more practical methods of paying with your phone have emerged, and at the same time, the impracticality of NFC became more evident (which likely had plenty to do with Isis’ delayed launch).

The hardware issue remains a problem for NFC: It requires special chips inside of mobile devices, which still aren’t nearly ubiquitous enough, and NFC readers at retailer registers.

Isis’ biggest competitor is Google Wallet, another NFC-based solution, which has failed to make a dent in the mobile payments arena. Google’s biggest problem is that it has only partnered with Sprint for Google Wallet — Isis has the advantage of being jointly owned by AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile.

Isis CEO Michael Abbott told us back in February that he doesn’t believe there’s a mobile wallet war, and he may just be right. There’s room for Isis to coexist among current mobile payment solutions, and it has a good shot of cementing itself as the leading NFC wallet thanks to its carrier connections. Juniper predicts NFC payments will hit $74 billion by 2015, so there’s good reason for Isis to stick it out, even if it doesn’t look like NFC is going to take off right away.

But now, more than ever, NFC mobile payments feel like an answer in search of a problem. Swiping credit cards isn’t exactly difficult for consumers, and it’s a system that we’ve come to understand. Swiping your phone doesn’t seem like a much more convenient alternative, and in many ways it could be more problematic for consumers.

Isis recently joined the newly formed Mobile Payments Committee, something that we’re hoping will give the industry some clearer direction.

There’s still plenty of room for mobile wallets to disrupt the way we pay — just look at the Pay with Square with app, which lets merchants charge you just based on your name and face. In many cases, you won’t even need to pull your phone out of your pocket.

That’s true innovation: something that makes life easier for consumers, merchants, and payment providers alike.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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Verifone has acquired European alternative payments provider Point, in an effort to broaden its range of mobile payment services for merchants and retailers, the company announced today.

Among its many payment offerings, Verifone makes near field communications (NFC) terminals that allow customers to swipe phones and payment cards at the point of sale to complete a purchase. Verifone is paying $816 million (600 million euros) for all Point equity and assets, and will be paying an additional $231 million (170 million euros) to settle outstanding Point debts.

Point is based in Stockholm and serves more than 450,000 merchant customers in 11 countries. Point, which handles point-of-sale transactions, conducts more than 10 million transactions per day. The acquisition should give Verifone a toehold in its battle against alternative and mobile payment services such as PayPal, Google, as well as large credit card companies such as Visa.

As AllThingsD has reported, Verifone has been on a tear of late, spending more than $1 billion per year to acquire smaller payment services providers. With the acquisition of Point, Verifone hopes to build the world’s largest infrastructure for rapid mobile payments. In a release accompanying the announcement, Verifone said it expects the acquisition of Point to add $260 million to its bottom line within the next 12 months.

[Phone image via Shutterstock]

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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When it was announced in November, the Isis mobile commerce network seemed like a bold attempt by wireless carriers to edge out credit companies on mobile payments.

Now the carriers behind Isis — AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile — have lowered their ambitions and are looking to partner up with Visa and MasterCard, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The news is a sign of the growing importance of mobile payments in the next few years. Clearly, the carriers behind Isis are desperate to get a mobile payment system going sooner, rather than later.

Instead of the carriers building their own payment network from scratch, which would have allowed them to collect fees with every transaction, they’re looking to create a “mobile wallet” that would store consumers’ existing credit card information. That would basically make paying for something with your phone no different from swiping your credit card.

Sources familiar with the situation tell the WSJ that it would have been too difficult for the carriers to build their own network, and that they’re in talks with Visa and Mastercard to ensure a large amount of carriers when the Isis mobile wallet launches. Discover — the original partner to handle payments for Isis — is still on board with the revamped plans, an Isis representative said.

It’s unclear how the carriers plan to make money from Isis without having full control of the payment network. According to the WSJ:

One option is a “pay-to-play” program that would charge card-issuing financial institutions to piggyback on their technology, people familiar with the matter said. Another is coupon-style offerings that would allow the carriers to take a cut of the revenue made from special offers served up to mobile payments customers, the people said.

Meanwhile, Isis will face stiff competition over the next few years. Google just recently joined the NFC Forum, which will give it some pull when it comes to the future of the technology. Google has also made NFC a key feature in the Nexus S Android smartphone, and it has teamed up with MasterCard and Citigroup to embed the technology in phones.

But the carriers aren’t sitting still with Isis. They announced today that they will launch a pilot program in Salt Lake City, Utah over the next few months, which will make the Utah Transit Authority system in the city Isis-enabled. Retailers in the city will also be equipped to accept purchases from Isis devices.

As the WSJ notes, the move towards a mobile wallet will put the carriers directly in competition with mobile manufacturers over where secure payment data is stored. Carriers want to store that information on SIM cards, while device makers would rather keep it directly on the phone, or on the non-removable NFC chip.

Most of the hype surrounding NFC is about payments – the ability to wave your phone at a point of sale terminal instead of whipping out a credit card or cash to buy that grande vanilla latte.

Speculation has it that if Apple or Google can make NFC chips in phones a mainstream payment option, they could upend the payments industry and put themselves smack in the middle of billions of dollars of transactions. Apple, pundits opine, could tie the mobile wallets to people’s iTunes accounts, and Google could tie it to Google Checkout.

If that’s all there is to it, then the naysayers are absolutely on the money. But NFC payments are the least of the mobile commerce equation.

(Editors note: this discussion about mobile payments and commerce is one of the five themes we’ll debating at the VentureBeat Mobile Summit, on April 25-26. For payments, we’ll have the top executives in the sector around the table, including representatives from Verizon, AT&T, Sybase, Zong, Boku, Visa, Square and disruptive credit card company Dynamics Inc. If you think you should be part of the discussion, you can apply here. Also, see our past articles about why NFC is overhyped, or why NFC matters. More on the series here.)

What will turn NFC from promise to reality is real-time, in-store personal marketing, merchandising and loyalty. Mobile wallets were never envisioned to deal with just debit and credit accounts. They’ll also hold your gift cards, coupons, admission tickets, transit tickets, and all of your loyalty cards for offers and promotions.

That’s how the merchants will make money and why mobile retail applications are beginning to proliferate today. And it’s where consumers will realize real value and convenience.

All of the other mCommerce ecosystem components – phones with NFC chips, contactless point-of-sale terminals at every retail register, back-end software that connects the banks, card issuers, and merchants – are simply a means to this end.

Because if merchants can’t make money and grow their business, and consumers don’t experience the technology as a better, faster, cheaper way to shop, then NFC will simply never happen.

The good news is that merchants get it.

NFC phones let them deliver high-value, personalized offers when you’re in their stores – offers that give you what you want, when you want it, based on your search and buying patterns. First-mover merchants are looking to grab a competitive edge and gain new ways to influence your buying behavior using time-limited sales and product-specific information from shelf tags. And best of all, from their perspective, NFC allows them to gather unprecedented amounts of new data on your likes and dislikes for future promotions and offers, such as opt-in deals you will value.

The naysayers would have you believe that rival mobile technologies like SMS or barcodes are good enough, and that they can do everything that NFC promises. But in the end, NFC will win the in-store battle for five simple reasons: it’s way faster and easier to use, it’s infinitely more secure, it has a much lower cost to scale at the point of sale, and it’s fully interactive near, in-store and at the point of sale.

NFC mCommerce is going to be huge. It will much bigger and grow much faster than ecommerce ever did.

That’s a bold statement, but here’s why: your smart phone is in some ways a much more powerful commerce device than your computer. It knows who you are. It knows when you are near or in your favorite stores. It can quickly access your search and purchase history. And best of all, it delivers instant gratification.

There are already five times more mobile phones than PCs in the world. And, in-store sales currently out number ecommerce by 19 to 1. Those are two things that are guaranteed not to change anytime soon.

By Christmas there will be about 35 million NFC-equipped mobile phones in the hands of consumers, and the experts predict that will grow to 1.5 billion phones worldwide in four short years.

Global security mandates for transaction processing are right now forcing upgrades to millions of retail point of sale systems around the world that cost a few hundred dollars each. As a result, consortiums are coalescing and rumored to be subsidizing NFC readers because big returns are so close they can taste them.

For the first time ever, instead of competing the three largest U.S. mobile operators — AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon — are collaborating to build a nationwide mobile 
commerce network utilizing NFC-equipped phones. Meanwhile, banks and tier-1 merchants are issuing NFC software and systems RFPs.

It’s no secret that web players like Google, Amazon, Yahoo!, Facebook, Microsoft, AOL, and Apple which collectively already own most on-line ad spending and shopping, want and need a way to do the same in the physical world. NFC is just the ticket, because it’s the proverbial bridge that seamlessly connects the virtual and brick-and-mortar markets.

So, get ready, world. Stop thinking mobile payments when you hear NFC, because payments are just the tip of the iceberg. And start thinking about a totally new medium – a brand new mobile advertising and shopping platform for mobile devices. Then you’ll understand why NFC mobile commerce is here and happening. Naysayers be damned!

Michael (Mick) Mullagh is CEO of ViVOtech, the NFC software and systems company based in Silicon Valley. He submitted this story to VentureBeat as part of a series leading up to our Mobile Summit later this month.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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Editor’s note: This discussion about mobile payments and commerce is one of the five themes we’ll debating at the VentureBeat Mobile Summit, on April 25-26. We’ve carefully invited the top mobile executives to help solve what we think are the biggest challenges in mobile. And for payments, we’ll have the top executives in the sector around the table, including representatives from Verizon, AT&T, Sybase, Boku, Zong, Visa, Square and disruptive credit card company Dynamics. (If you think you should be part of the discussion, you can apply for a ticket. More on the series here.)

The Web is abuzz about the impact near-field communication (NFC) will have on payments in the not so distant future. Proponents propose that tapping your phone to pay is a vastly better consumer experience than swiping a credit card and more major players are jumping onto the NFC train every day.

But what’s really going to make NFC and mobile payments interesting are the apps that add value to the consumers and the merchants alike.

Google has the NFC enabled Nexus S, three of the major carriers in the US have formed the ISIS mobile payment group, and there are rumors swirling about NFC in the next iPhone. But will NFC really provide enough benefit to consumers to make them put away the plastic? Credit cards enjoy an install base that NFC won’t see for years, and the experience with credit cards is already pretty amazing. You swipe your card and the transaction goes from merchant to issuer and back to merchant in seconds. You don’t even have to sign for most transactions under $25 (per Visa/MasterCard rules).

In fact, some of credit cards are already NFC enabled – you may even have one in your wallet right now but, chances are, you never even think to tap at checkout. The truth is that NFC, in and of itself, provides very little added value to the consumer experience at point-of-sale (POS), and certainly not enough to turn the tides away from plastic. The real opportunity presented by NFC isn’t about increased speed or reduced friction in transactions. So, what’s the big deal?

Smart Phones vs. Dumb Cards

To put it bluntly, your credit card is optimal only for what it is: a payment instrument. Unlike a phone, a credit card doesn’t have its own processor, it’s not directly connected to the Internet, and it absolutely doesn’t have access to all of the smart apps that can add value to each transaction. Sure, it can let me buy what I want, but it can’t tell me if that new Hawaiian shirt is a good financial (or fashion) decision or, automatically do the paperwork for me to collect the rebate on that LED TV).  NFC enabled phones may finally have enough benefit to consumers and merchants to be the first technology to offer enough added value to replace credit cards.

Some relevant data about who’s using what:

• The average American consumer carries roughly 3.5 credit cards
• Globally there are 94 million PayPal accounts and growing
• Nearly 300,000,000 smartphones were shipped in 2010 alone, estimated to be over 400,000,000 in 2011
• Mobile payments accounted for $162 billion in global transactions in 2010 alone and are predicted to reach $984 billion by 2014

With an NFC enabled smartphone, and a payments network to process billing, consumers can have all of their payment options available right on their phone, and they can choose whether they want to make a purchase via credit card, PayPal, Amex’s Serve, or direct mobile billing. Choose your payment option, tap, and you’re done.

The NFC Experience

The real added value to the consumer experience is in apps. By “apps,” we don’t mean Angry Birds. We’re talking about “apps” as a group of feature-rich tools that are installed on a mobile device and connected to the cloud – everything from your calendar to a pedometer. With NFC enabled phones powering the world’s transactions, the following scenarios are not that far off:

• You’ve been out shopping all day; you used credit cards, PayPal/Serve, and direct mobile billing. Because your phone was synced with Quicken/Mint, your transactions across all of your accounts are posted in real-time, and you’re alerted that you are about to go over budget with a real-time message.
• You’re a huge foodie, and you discovered this awesome new taco truck that you think all of your friends should know about. When you pay with your phone, which is already connected to Facebook, you instantly get checked in and you get to tell your friends all about your delicious new find.
• You’re at a business dinner and you use your NFC enabled phone to pay for the meal. Because your phone knows that you’re at a restaurant, it immediately pulls up a tip calculator with your tab already factored in.  One tap to add the tip and you look like the smartest person in the room.
• You’re buying groceries and your phone automatically suggests that you use your Visa over your MasterCard because your Visa gives you 5% cash back on all food purchases.

Of course, all of these applications are just a taste of what NFC on your smartphone can do. There’s a ton of disruption happening in the payments space, and it’s a very exciting time with a ton of really cool functionality on the horizon.  The best part about it all is that, in the end, the consumer wins.

Ron Hirson is the co-founder and SVP of Boku. He submitted this story to VentureBeat as part of a series leading up to our Mobile Summit later this month.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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Google is once again throwing its weight behind near-field communications (NFC) technology by joining the NFC Forum, an industry association that has been advancing the technology for years.

The news is yet another sign that Google has high hopes for NFC, which will let you make purchases and transfer information securely using your phone, or other mobile devices simply by swiping the device over a reader. The announcement is especially intriguing since it was revealed yesterday that Google is no longer supporting QR barcodes for Google Places, another technology that can be used for mobile information transfer. We also learned earlier this week that the company has teamed up with Mastercard and Citigroup to implement NFC in Android phones.

Google is joining the NFC Forum as a principal member, the second-highest level of membership in the organization. That entitles Google to appoint a voting representative in the forum’s technical, marketing, compliance committees and working groups. Principal members can also use their own in-house labs for NFC Forum testing and certification, propose initiatives to the group, and designate people to run for positions that would lead committees and working groups.

Chip companies Intel and CSR also raised their membership level in the group to the principal level. In addition to Google, the NFC Forum announced today that it has added 31 new members, including Hitachi and Daimler AG.

Some believe that NFC technology is overhyped, but it’s hard to ignore the confluence of NFC hardware, interested companies, and participating retailers that may finally let it take off. Google included NFC in its latest flagship Android phone, the Nexus S, and we reported earlier this month that it’s begun tests for NFC in New York and San Francisco. Many other companies, including RIM and Nokia, have discussed using the technology as well (though it seems Apple may still be on the fence). Verizon Wireless, AT&T, and T-Mobile also said last fall that they would team up on a mobile payment system — dubbed Isis — for smartphones.

1. Tearing down walls between industries and platforms. This never used to happen with frequency. But there is so much disruption going on that it is becoming common for a company in one industry to tear down the walls and invade its rivals’ turf. The main beneficiary is the consumer, who enjoys the benefits of more competition.

The clearest example of this at CES was Microsoft’s announcement that it would create a future version of Windows that runs on both Intel-compatible x86 chips as well as ARM-based processors being developed by Qualcomm, Texas Instruments and Nvidia. For users, that means that, when this version of Windows ships (most likely in 2012), they will have more choice in terms of processor types and computer models. The chips could power a wide variety of gadgets, from high-end PCs to smart TVs, tablets, and smartphones. Intel’s near monopoly generated billions of dollars in profits, which Intel is using to invade its rivals’ turf in smartphones.

Another example was Samsung’s deal with Comcast and Time Warner Cable to put their programs on Samsung’s TVs and other gadgets. By providing web-based content to Samsung, the cable companies can break out of their geographic territories. A user in Comcast’s territory could watch shows in Time Warner Cable’s region. This kind of deal liberates content, breaking down artificial barriers.

Still another example was Vizio’s deal with OnLive to include OnLive’s server-based games in Vizio TVs. OnLive can provide console-quality games via a broadband connection directly to the TVs, with no extra hardware built into the TV. The result is a low-cost platform that can play high-end games. That disrupts not only the game retailers, but the game consoles themselves. No longer do you have to spend extra money on a console to play games on your TV. OnLive is also going to provide movies over its broadband service, potentially disrupting cable companies.

2. 4G LTE arrives. We’ve heard a lot about 4G in the past, but it’s not just bluster anymore. Verizon has launched its 4G LTE service in 38 cities, offering mobile broadband download speeds of 5 – 12 megabits a second. That’s pretty impressive, and it means that users will be able to spend more time surfing and less time waiting when they’re trying to get information on the internet. Companies are figuring out that when you’re mobile, you really have less patience than when you are at home waiting for web pages to load. AT&T said at CES that it will have its 4G LTE network ready in the second half of 2011. And Verizon said that its 4G LTE service will cover 100 markets with more than 175 million people by the end of 2011. It will have nationwide coverage by the end of 2013. Lowell McAdam, chief operating officer of Verizon, said that faster broadband will spur innovation and create jobs for those who exploit the networks. That’s a long wait. But at least it’s a real roadmap.

3. Tablets get real beyond iPad. The joke has become familiar. Pundits predicted that 2010 would be the year of the tablet. Instead, it became the year of the iPad. Now the rival tablet vendors are showing their stuff and Apple hasn’t yet revealed its second-generation device in this exploding category.

The Motorola Xoom was one of the most impressive among the 80-plus models of tablets that were at the show. The tablet will be among the first to run Verizon’s 4G LTE service at speeds of 5 – 12 megabits per second for downloads. Motorola is reportedly aiming at selling 1 million Xoom tablets in the first quarter of 2011. The device will also use the 3.0 version of the Android operating system, which is the first version of Android that looks like it is ready for prime time. Many of the new tablets will also have Nvidia dual-core Tegra 2 chips. That means you won’t be waiting as long when you want your tablet to work as fast as possible.

The Motorola device supports features such as Flash, which is ubiquitous on the internet. The combination of tablets, faster chips, Flash, Android 3.0, and 4G LTE could help tip the balance against the iPad in the competitive market.

4. Android grows up. Fragmented and slow, Android software generated a lot of complaints in the past year. When it was launched in the fall of 2008, the first Android phone, the T-Mobile G1 from HTC, was a weak competitor to the iPhone; it didn’t even have a decent multitouch screen. You could swipe your phone four times before anything would happen.

The Android Marketplace was a poor cousin of the App Store. It allowed users to return paid apps within 24 hours. The problem was that many users could finish playing with an app during that time. The policy destroyed the opportunity for developers to make money. Over time, Google released seven major versions of the software. Each released fixed problems, but they also fragmented the user base into a lot of different parts.

With the Android 3.0 Honeycomb version of Android, many of the problems will be fixed. It will have a better user interface, support for tablets, a 3D desktop taken from BumpTop (acquired by Google in 2010) and other improvements such as live video conferencing. The new version is designed from the ground up to support multitasking. Scheduled to arrive in the first quarter, the 3.0 Honeycomb version of Android looks real. It reminds me of the first real version of Microsoft Windows, version 3.1.

5. Glasses-free 3D pushes the bleeding edge. The marketing hype on 3D has gone into overdrive for the past couple of years. James Cameron’s blockbuster 3D movie Avatar finally broke through a wall of skepticism in the theaters. But the home market has been hard to crack. This year, another big pile of money went into 3D. So far, it’s a lot of work for little gain. Toshiba showed off a glasses-free TV set that seemed like a good thing. But up close, you could still see ghosting, or double images, and it had a narrow sweet spot. If you stepped out of it, the images became blurry. Toshiba also showed off a glasses-free 3D laptop, but the effect was much the same.

3D in the home still has a long way to go. Slowly but surely, it’s moving forward. More than half of the new TV models from LG, Samsung and Panasonic were 3D capable. LG created 3D TVs that could use the less bulky passive glasses, which don’t have to be charged. That’s a much better experience for consumers.

Still I’ve only encountered a few cool 3D experiences. The Nvidia 3D Vision glasses work great on a three-monitor set-up with a gamer PC loaded with Nvidia’s fastest graphics cards. Watching flight simulators or racing games on three monitors is a very cool experience. But not many folks can afford the $3,000-plus bill (though it can be done as cheaply as $1,500). Nintendo’s glasses-free 3DS handheld game system, launching in March, also does an excellent job of maintaining a 3D image. It’s easier to stay still watching that device because the screen is just a couple of inches. And MasterImage 3D (executive Roy Taylor pictured above) also showed off glasses-free stereoscopic 3D running on cell phones and small displays. The quality of the imagery is great for watching 3D movies on the run. That’s because MasterImage 3D divides a screen into a series of cells that can be manipulated in a fine-grained manner. These are small islands of coolness in a sea of vast hype.

6. Motion controls move to the PC and beyond. Microsoft Kinect shipped more than 8 million units in 60 days, proving that Xbox 360 gamers want motion control. That quite possibly makes Kinect the most popular consumer electronics gadget in history. Now a bunch of companies are excited about bringing that capability to PC games and the TV itself. Asus tapped PrimeSense (pictured, PrimeSense CEO Inon Beracha), the supplier of 3D motion control chips for the Kinect, for its Asus Wavi motion-control system, which takes PC content and moves it to the PC. There, you can control the content and other media through hand gestures. The show had many more examples of motion control, including Omek Interactive, Softkinetics, Panasonic and other vendors.

7. Smartphones blur the line with computing. The Motorola Atrix 4G phone came with an interesting dock that has a screen and a keyboard. You can use it as a virtual laptop. Sporting a dual-core Nvidia Tegra 2 chip, the device blurs the line between the computer and the phone. Sure, it’s a smartphone. But it could very well be the beginning of smartphones that are more powerful than a lot of the computers we own.

8. Car computing gets smarter. From OnStar’s smart rear-view mirror, which allows you to make hands-free emergency service calls or normal calls, to the Ford Focus with Sync voice-activated controls, cars are getting equipped with full-fledged computers. You can also use your MyFord Mobile smartphone app to preheat or precool your car and monitor its charging while the electric car battery is plugged in. OnStar has a pricey $19 a month subscription fee and costs $299. But it’s certainly a lot cheaper than buying a new car to get fancy computing capability.

9. Wireless networking becomes mature. Some of the newest wireless devices are finally allowing us to get rid of some wires in our tech gear. Devices such as Samsung’s Central Station show that wireless networking is hitting maturity. Talked about for years, fast wireless networks such as ultrawideband, WirelessHD, WHDI, and near-field communications are coming to fruition. Alereon’s UWB chips power the Central Station, which allows you to drop a laptop near your desktop-style dock and then have it immediately recognized and connected. It has a 23-inch or 27-inch display that you can connect to with your laptop.

Near-field communications can also do the job when all you need to do is pair two devices, such as a cell phone and a headset. Near-field devices have extremely short ranges so you can’t confuse them easily when pairing. Broadcom showed that you can simply put the devices near each other and they immediately recognize each other and pair themselves. That’s a lot simpler than trying to pair a Bluetooth device, which often finds multiple devices to pair with.

10. The anti-Apple coalition is getting stronger. Apple has always cast a large shadow over CES. It never comes to the show, but its influence is everywhere. When Apple came up with the translucent iMac years ago, the next year’s CES featured lots of translucent PCs.

As Apple innovated with the iPhone and the iPad, its rivals seemed like the Keystone Cops. They couldn’t get anything right, and the net result was that Apple commanded around 95 percent of the tablet computer market during the fall. The iPhone is in a neck-and-neck battle with Android.

But now the barbarians are at the gates. As we’ve noted in our earlier trends, everyone is starting to get their act together. Microsoft is coming up with a version of Windows that runs on ARM chips, which means it will make a better tablet OS. Palm, under the ownership of Hewlett-Packard, is preparing to launch new WebOS tablets. The Android crew is putting together a better mobile operating system. Rivals are likely to deploy 4G LTE smartphones and tablets sooner than Apple will. And a lot of the new tablets and smartphones will take advantage of stellar new chips such as Nvidia’s Tegra 2.

This means that Apple better have some pretty cool products when it gets around to launching the iPad 2 (possibly this spring) and the iPhone 5 (possibly this summer). You can bet that Apple will stay in the lead when it comes to cool product design. But how big will that lead be?

11. Touching is good. Touchscreens are getting more and more popular, and they’re also getting better and better. Microsoft’s second version of its Surface touchscreen tables are pretty spectacular. At $7,600 and much less bulky, they are half the price of the first version. Microsoft’s Touch Mouse will get you in the mood to fondle, combining the features of touch and a mouse in one device.

3M and Perceptive Pixels also showed off cool 23-inch touchscreens that could handle dozens of touch points and still have a response time of less than five milliseconds. That’s a very fast reaction, and it means that responsiveness is on the upswing. That’s important because we have all been frustrated by touching screens that don’t respond quickly enough.

And touching is getting smarter. The screen technology from Stantum showed that you can write on a tablet with your finger or your stylus. And when you do so, you don’t have to worry if your palm is touching the device. The screen is smart enough to recognize that you don’t really mean to touch the screen and write with your palm.

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July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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We’ve previously reported that AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile were gearing up to have your cellphone replace your credit card — now it’s official. The companies today announced the Isis mobile commerce network, which uses near-field communication (NFC) technology to let you make purchases with your phone.

The news seems fitting, since just yesterday Google CEO Eric Schmidt showed off a prototype Nexus S Android phone with NFC technology built-in. The carriers say the technology will be launching over the next 18 months in “key geographic markets” — which I read as major cities.

The network will offer even more than mobile payments and will go towards offering a personalized shopping experience, according to Isis CEO Michael Abbott, who previously spent a decade at GE Capital. “We plan to create a mobile wallet that ultimately eliminates the need for consumers to carry cash, credit and debit cards, reward cards, coupons, tickets and transit passes,” he said in a press release.

By next year, NFC technology will likely find its way into most high-end phones. It’s telling that it was the first thing Eric Schmidt showed off with his Nexus S, and there have long been rumors about Apple trying to put NFC tech in the next-generation iPhone.

The three carriers collectively have over 200 million customers in the US. In one fell swoop, they’ll soon make NFC transactions a possibility for nearly two-thirds of the US.

Via BGR, photo via Ed Yourdon

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Near-field communications chips are built into Japanese cell phones. But the technology has been very slow to take off in the U.S. Part of the reason is that so many merchant locations have traditional credit card readers in place and are loathe to upgrade the 1970s technology without a clear benefit.

Schmidt made the announcement in an opening talk with John Battelle and Tim O’Reilly at the Web 2.0 Summit today in San Francisco.

The fact that the upcoming Google Android phone, which will be made and sold by unnamed Google partners, has near-field communications built into it shows that the chicken-and-egg problem may be overcome soon. After all, a phone maker wouldn’t add the unnecessary cost of the near-field communications chips if it felt there wouldn’t be any readers around to read them.

Schmidt said that the new phone would run the upcoming Gingerbread version of the Android operating system. Asked when Gingerbread would arrive, Schmidt said a few weeks. He wouldn’t comment on the name of his phone and stressed that the company did not plan to do a Nexus Two phone (but it seems there’s room for other Nexus devices).

Update: Video of Schmidt’s panel has been uploaded. Check it out below: