MomoLondon NFC: Victoria Richardson, Proxama Shows a video of phones touching other phones to a pumping techno soundtrack. Things happen when the phones touch other phones. Service discovery, payments, ticketing and access control are easily made accessible via NFC. But why? Brands and retailers are on the edge of the NFC world Smart Poster: dumb RFID chip. Benefits: trying stuff out, accessing links, and sharing stuff. Sounds like a good scheme for avoiding the burden of knowing about or entering links. For some reason, a Hajj-like image of keen consumers desperately trying to touch posters springs to mind. NFC ties into an infrastructure which already exists (hmm... the readers might exist but this doesn't imply we'll have access to the installed infrastructure) Claire Maslen, Head of NFC, O2 Telefonica Presenting some insights from the NFC trial O2 ran, and some areas of opportunity which - in hindsight - they didn't give enough attention. Trial: 500 O2 customers (prepay/postpay), lots of use cases (transport, payment, access control, smart posters). All using Nokia 6131. Results:
  • Encouraging positive reaction
  • 9/10 trialists happy using the technology
  • 79% said they'd like to use their phone to pay/travel in future
  • Convenience, ease of use, and status were factors in getting this positive response
More detail for transport:
  • 89% of triallists wanted to take this up
  • 67% said it was more convenient than Oyster card
  • 87% said Oyster support in-phone would make a difference to their choice of phone)
For Visa:
  • 68% wanted to use this in future
  • 41% felt it was faster than paying with cash (not sure how this is a good stat... most people still think cash is faster, no?)
  • 47% said it was an influencing factor in phone purchase
Customers appreciated the NFC applications, despite the fact that the 6131 isn't a high-end device. Hmm, it's almost as though customers want to do things, and that's more important than their phone or network... Panel discussion moderated by Mr Appelquist Victoria and Claire: John Hill: involved in Oyster for years, was responsible for original Oyster rollout. Founded iBridge James Anderson: product development for Mastercard. Steve Griffiths: runs IconMobile, works with Visa. Will be sharing the WPP perspective (WPP part-own Icon). Message so far: "NFC: It's Getting There" JA: It takes time to roll out hardware (in this case readers for merchants and RFID handsets for users). VR: Nice point about chip'n'PIN and NFC meaning customers keep control of their own stuff. DA: There's lots of info around the ease with which NFC/RFID can be hacked, particularly with active terminals. Is it safe? The panel seem to conclude it's safe. DA: What are the opportunities around third parties and brands? What's the long tail of NFC? VR: There are lots of enterprise apps out there. SG: It addresses 3 big topics: (1) simplicity (tapping the phone makes something complex straightforward)... We're thinking about the things beyond that tap and beyond the payment. (2) discovery of content (3) operator data + transactional data. I suspect (3) involves operators sharing way more data than they ever have. Questions NFC seems to be a great way of reducing the effort for consumers of interacting with advertising, but anyone with a phone can interact with an advert now with keywords and shortcodes. Isn't it a lot of infrastructure to roll out to smart posters, for little additional benefit (or some pain: sometimes it's nice not to have to touch a poster to interact with it) Do you think that the advertising industry wants its broadcast ads to be interactive and therefore more accountable? Do you think that the pain of sending an SMS is putting people off interacting now? Does the ad industry really want outdoors media to be accountable? The ad industry had a lot of trouble with SMS because it made all their unaccountable media accountable and the creative opportunities of 160 characters were so limited. Isn't NFC even more limiting? At this point I transferred my ranting to twitter. My takeaways:
  1. NFC seems to nicely reduce the effort in choosing to interact with physical spaces (e.g. for advertising response);
  2. It's going to be a good few years before it's out there in numbers worth bothering with;
  3. We'll need content sitting behind these "taps";