Android Ginerbread adds NFC support

Listening to the conversation with Eric Schmidt at the Web 2.0 Summit 2010, I was pleasantly surprised that the new Android 2.3 (called "Gingerbread"), will add support for NFC, or Near Field Communication (I heard rumors about this in the past). There are many use cases that I can think of, the major one being using your phone for making payments. I said it in the past that the main reason I think NFC has not been adopted is because there was no major company/platform using it. Now there is.

Gartner's Top 10 Mobile Apps for 2012

Gartner has released its top 10 applications for 2012.

"Consumer mobile applications and services are no longer the prerogative of mobile carriers,” said Sandy Shen, research director at Gartner. “The increasing consumer interest in smartphones, the participation of Internet players in the mobile space, and the emergence of application stores and cross-industry services are reducing the dominance of mobile carriers. Each player will influence how the application is delivered and experienced by consumers, who ultimately vote with their attention and spending power".

LBS applications are at number 2. The LBS user base is predicted to grow to 526 million by 2012 (from 96 million in 2009). NFC is at number 7. I read here that some new version of iPhone is supposed to include NFC support (actually support for proximity), and I do believe it's about time for the mobile industry to get behind this technology.

You can read the entire report at Gartner.