The decision by three major U.S. wireless carriers to partner with leading credit card companies on a mobile commerce initiative will boost the market for embedded payment technology in cell phones, helping global shipments of handsets with near field communication (NFC) technology to rise to nearly 550 million units by 2015, according to new IHS iSuppli (NYSE: IHS) research.
AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile said they would work with Visa and MasterCard on their Isis joint venture, which was established to form a nationwide infrastructure for NFC enabled mobile payments using mobile handsets in the United States. The original Isis joint venture announced in November 2010 did not include Visa and MasterCard, the largest U.S. credit card companies. Instead, Isis employed Discover Financial Services and the U.S. arm of U.K. bank Barclays to handle the monetary aspects of commercial NFC mobile payments services in the United States.
“By partnering with the dominant players (Visa and MasterCard) the wireless carriers are making the right moves to create an ecosystem that will allow consumers to become comfortable with making NFC payments through their cell phones,” said Dr. Jagdish Rebello, director and principal analyst for communications and consumer electronics with iSuppli. “The carriers hope to leverage the dominant position enjoyed by Visa and MasterCard in credit card payments to ensure a seamless consumer experience when customers use their mobile phones to make payments. Such a move will drive an increase in unit shipments of cell phones with embedded NFC capability in the United States and around the world.”
With the participation of Visa and MasterCard, the Isis system will allow consumer credit card information to be securely stored on cell phones, and will use NFC as the communication protocol to facilitate the financial transaction.
Combined with Google Inc.’s continued efforts to promote mobile payment technology in Android smart phones, the changes in the Isis initiative have spurred an upgrade in the IHS iSuppli forecast for global shipments of NFC-equipped cell phones. IHS now predicts 93.2 million NFC-equipped cell phones will ship worldwide in 2011, up from the December forecast of 79.8 million, as shown in the attached figure. In 2014, 411.8 million NFC cell phones will ship, compared to 220.1 million in the previous prediction.
Shipments then will rise to 544.7 million in 2015. This means that 30.5 % of all cell phones shipped in 2015 will have the capability to conduct mobile commerce using NFC technology.
NFC promises to revolutionize the way consumers pay for goods and services by allowing them to use their cell phones to make purchases. With NFC, consumers can pay their bus fare, buy a plane ticket or make an ATM/credit card purchase simply by holding their cell phones near wireless terminals.
The starting gun for the rapid growth of the NFC handset market was sounded last year, when Google said it would support the technology in the latest release of the Android operating system and would work to create an ecosystem for NFC payments. With this move, Google made a play for leadership in the mobile commerce segment.
Visa and MasterCard’s move to participate in Isis represents an attempt by these big credit card companies to prevent Google from gaining a strong foothold in the market for mobile payments.
With the addition of the major financial firms, the Isis effort is set to gain momentum over the long term. However, Isis is facing some short-term delays while it recalibrates its mobile payment strategy to suit Visa and MasterCard.
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Cordless Phones: Boosting The Working Efficiency Of An Office
Needless to say that mobile phones have replaced cordless phones, which have their own identity in the market. In this regard it is also true that people are really get benefited when they use cordless phones in comparison to the conventional telephones. Home DECT phones are also known as cordless phones which enable their users to have a conversation while moving around the room and in the garden. It is their first and foremost advantage. It has been seen while using normal phones users can only talk with their loved ones sitting at one place. On the contrary, cordless phones provide their users with free mobility while having a conversation on the phones because they are not connected to the handset through the wire. Every phone has a different range provided by the base station available with the phones.
Users can find a range of variety of these gadgets, be it a digital telephone or a cordless phone. Most people are tending towards the usage of cordless 2 line phones because they provide their users to talk on two lines instead of one. It is considered to be the second major advantage of using these phones. An integrated dual function of cordless 2 line phones allows them to make two output telephone lines of one input. This is really beneficial for their users because with the help of two telephone lines two people can use the phone conveniently at the same time on different-2 lines.
Most large business organisations and corporations prefer to use cordless phones due to their immense advantages. In case if you have a normal phone and you are talking with someone regarding your business. Meanwhile, your potential customer or client make a call to you. At that time, he or she will get the busy signal from your side or he or she will be directed to voicemail. It is generally seen that he/she just hang up once he/she is directed to the voicemail and hear the automated response. In case if you are running a business organisations and large corporations then you will not be able to afford this because of not attending every incoming call, which matters for you. For instance, if a buyer makes a call to the company to collect the information of the particular product and he/she finds the phone busy and gets directed to the automated response, then he/she will definitely call another company to get the desired product.
Hence, every company needs to go through its every incoming call. The main benefit of using cordless phones is that while using these pones company representatives can go their laptops and files to provide required information to their customers. With the help of attractive features like call forwarding and call hold a company representative approach the required information and forward it to its customers. Undoubtedly, these days cordless phones have become a cheaper alternative that can be used for installing phone extensions in any office. Apart from availing at effective prices, they also help in increasing the overall efficiency of an organisation.