TOKYO - As usual, Sony was showing an impressive array of uses for its FeliCa contactless technology at the annual IC Card World exhibition this past week in Tokyo.
There was a demo of FeliCa-enabled television remote controls on which people could tap their FeliCa e-money cards or wallet phones to pay for video on demand. And a demo of FeliCa-embedded glucose meters and pedometers showed how users could tap the health monitoring devices on their PCs or phones to automatically send readings over the network to servers that would analyze the data and send back the results. And then there were the “data handover” applications on the Sony booth, which would enable users to sync photos, music and other big files among their phones, PCs, cameras and other devices with FeliCa chips inside.
Besides the growing number of devices in Japan–many of them also made by Sony–that pack FeliCa chips–there are millions of FeliCa transit cards in circulation across Japan, most of them interoperable. And there were 125 million prepaid e-money cards supporting six payment schemes on issue as of January 2010 (see table below), up 24% from a year earlier. That’s not counting the post-paid payment schemes. Of course, there are the 62 million mobile phones equipped with even more sophisticated FeliCa chips, putting NFC-like capability into the pockets of more than half of subscribers in Japan.
Great article Dan! I'm off to Japan myself at the end of the month...
Red