Waiting for the Adoption of Local NFC Application

Several days ago, Kompas wrote that Nokia is ready to launch two new mobile phones (Nokia 600 and 700) with NFC technology embedded and ready to use by Indonesian market.

Well, surely I'm not going to discuss about the gadget. I am more interested in discussing the NFC technology and its correlation to local applications in oder to maximize their technology.

According to Kompas, there are at least two applications from local developer such as Menoo! Tap Tap from Elasitas, and Smash Mania, a game from Agate that uses NFC technology. Those applications were introduced at INAICTA. Unfortunately, I couldn’t attend the event so that I couldn’t try those applications myself. Therefore, I tried to contact Narenda, developer relation from Nokia to get further information about it.

Narenda explained that Menoo! NFC - Menoo! Tap Tap is an application for food directory that uses NFC technology. Users will be able to tap their phone on an NFC - supported merchants affiliated to this application in order to get special offers or discount.

Similar to Menoo! NFC, Smash Mania is also maximizing the use of NFC technology. However, it collaborates NFC with augmented reality where the game players will be able to tap NFC tag to get new field or to play in multiplayer mode.

NFC is one of the technology extensively promoted by Nokia for their new product releases, although it is not developed by Nokia but Narenda stated that this technology was first brought to Indonesian market by Nokia.

Besides that, those two games can be played on N9, the first and the last Megoo phone from Nokia.

The usage of NFC, especially for this application is quiet interesting, off course in foreign country, we can see that Google use this technology to leverage payment technology . I hope that later, this (NFC Nokia phone) can also be implemented for payment technology in Indonesia.

However, those two applications are quite interesting. Although I haven’t tried it yet, I have some picture about the implementation of this NFC technology because actually I have played application/game with NFC technology.

While for the Meeno! Tap Tap, I tried to contact Calvin Kizana from Elasitas, Meeno! Developer, to get a view about this application. The screenshot as follows is one of Meeno! Tap Tap implementation view in the merchant's perspective. This application will be used to facilitate payment, book a set, look at menus, get reward, and to see promotions/discounts.

Calvin also added that, “Menoo! Tap Tap will be implemented on Nokia 600 and the latest Nokia 700. It will be running on Symbian OS that will be released on Nokia Ovi Store starting from 1 November 2011. Next will be Meenoo! Tap Tap for Nokia N9 with Meego OS in Desember 2011."

Then, my questions are: how big is this NFC adoption for Nokia mobile devices? And will the users be aware about this technology and want to use it in daily basis - through application?

On daily basis, I find only a few people who own this mobile phone, or maybe there are not many of my friends who uses NFC (specifically for Nokia mobile phone). I hope that it will change soon although this kind of mobile device is sold in premium price range, even in luxurious price range for the N9. Unfortunately, the information about the numbers of Nokia C7 purchases or other NFC-enabled mobile phones are not available on the newest report Q3 2011 from Nokia. Therefore, we cannot predict the number of NFC users. Meanwhile, Nokia 600 and 700 will be available before the end of this year.

Nokia seems to have intensive campaign to introduce and persuade users to use NFC. They do it not only to consumers but also to media. On Monday, Nokia Indonesia had a media briefing for Symbian Belle and NFC, i will make another post for it.

However, it's still interesting to see how local NFC-supported applications adoption in market and what application will emerge to answer the challenge of NFC application.