RIM: NFC PlayBook coming this year?

Near-field communications coming to almost all RIM devices in 2011, says UK MD...

Will RIM's PlayBook tablet have near-field communications inside?
Photo: RIM

BlackBerry maker RIM will be putting near-field communications (NFC) into almost all devices it launches this year, its UK MD has revealed.

Speaking at a Westminster eForum keynote seminar in London, Stephen Bates said: "We're going to deploy NFC in virtually all our new devices moving forward. Our impulse is to build an ecosystem to try and exploit the capabilities of this technology so all of us can use and have a much more interactive capability in our lives and on our devices."

When added to smartphones, NFC technology allows devices to communicate securely with a contactless reader when the phone is swiped over it to make a payment, or for other uses such as mobile ticketing.

As well as enabling contactless payments for m-commerce and mobile ticketing, Bates said NFC could be used to connect to peripherals, to link mobile users to offers and to improve social interactions between mobile users.

"This technology is going to open up a whole raft of new capabilities in the mobile market that creates new businesses, new markets, new revenue streams," said Bates, adding: "Fundamentally, the opportunities are endless."

Bates' comments follow broad hints dropped by RIM's co-founder Jim Balsillie at the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona in February. In a keynote session about the rise of new types of connected devices, he told delegates: "It would be remiss of me if I did not mention NFC. Many, if not most, of BlackBerry devices throughout the year will have NFC in them."

Balsillie said the rise of NFC offers mobile operators opportunities to monetise new services - and avoid being disintermediated by becoming a mere 'dumb pipe'.

"The carrier has an exciting future as a payments services platform," he added.

Talking about the rise of tablets, and how smartphones and tablets might be used in tandem in future, RIM's Bates said tablet users will be keen to get a full, PC-like internet experience - with Flash and HTML support - on these larger gadgets, which he said may free up smartphones to refocus purely on comms again.

"We think we're going to see a change in the way people behave," he said. "Using tablets as their mobile computing platform and smartphones, we think, could potentially drift back to being a pure ultimate communications device."

RIM's own tablet - the seven-inch PlayBook - was announced last year but has not been launched yet. Nevertheless, Bates didn't miss the opportunity to criticise rival slates that are already in the market, such as Apple's iPad and Samsung's Android-based Galaxy Tab.

"[The BlackBerry PlayBook] will be one of the first tablets that will enable you to have that real pure internet web experience that you've not yet had because today the executions [on rival tablets] are all very compressed, rerendered or a limited web experience," Bates said.

"We're all now used to having smartphones. We're all now used to this instantaneous appeal of having a very immersive interaction but we all want more... we're demanding more, we're looking for more media content, we want to consume more, we want to interact more and what we're seeing is this demand is being met reasonably well with smartphones," he added. "But this has created this gap in the market around form factor where it's easier to do richer media, richer web content. We think that's what this tablet market explosion we're about to see is all about."

Bates also touched on the company's BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) IM service, suggesting the system could be made to act as a secure transaction receipt when tied in to operator billing - a payment option RIM already offers for app downloads from its App World store. He described a potential use in which a child is able to send a BBM to one of its parents to request a mobile top-up and their parents can then charge the cost of the top-up back to their own mobile bill.

"We think the potential of all these pieces to fit together is going to make a whole new environment for monetising mobile," added Bates.

Mobile social networking and collaboration services are going to become increasingly important to business users too, according to Bates. "We started with our focus in the business market. In the past couple of years we've evolved into the consumer market but fundamentally we see the business market as essential for the proposition of BlackBerry and we see the need for business-based collaboration expanding exponentially over the next few years," he said.