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Near Field Communication and all contactless technology

NFC Times Exclusive: Several hotel chains are planning to start equipping certain properties with door locks supporting Bluetooth low energy by the early part of next year, or are seriously investigating the technology, which enables guests to enter their rooms with keys stored on their smartphones, Legic Identsystems, one of the technology vendors involved, told NFC Times.

As the NFC Forum launches a new program to attract more application developers to the NFC ecosystem, the organization told NFC Times that it is encouraged by Apple’s adoption but considers it likely that the NFC developer community will focus on Android for the near future.

Taiwan’s largest mobile operator, Chunghwa Telecom, will announce the small commercial launch of NFC service on Wednesday, with participation from MasterCard Worldwide, four major banks and the island nation’s largest transit and retail e-purse, EasyCard, NFC Times has learned.

NFC Times Exclusive: Despite the announcement by Apple of its first NFC-enabled iPhone, released Friday, promoters of NFC-enabled attachments targeting the iPhone contend they will not lose business.

Just when many industry observers were counting Softcard out in the wake of Apple’s announcement of Apple Pay, the mobile carrier joint venture formerly known as Isis today announced a deal with its biggest merchant to date, the Subway sandwich fast-food chain.

NFC Times Exclusive: Apple’s decision to exclude tag-reading functionality from its forthcoming NFC-enabled iPhones has caused disappointment among suppliers of tags and developers of tag applications, who told NFC Times they believe the omission could confuse consumers and potentially hamper tag-marketing campaigns.

NFC Times Exclusive: Ofer Tziperman, CEO of Israel-based NFC reader maker OTI, has named two of its largest reader customers in the North American market in an interview with NFC Times.

Quebec-based credit union Desjardins says that it expects gradual, or what it calls “progressive,” adoption of the SIM-based NFC mobile payments service, which it launched commercially this week, following an earlier soft launch.

The telco-owned joint venture behind the Isis Wallet announced a new name for the wallet, while the merchant-led MCX consortium finally released its consumer-facing brand and a timeframe for a planned rollout, as the U.S. mobile-payments landscape heats up.

LG Electronics has signed a global licensing deal for NFC technology patents from Inside Secure, an initial win for Inside and its strategy to try to cash in on its NFC IP.

U.S.-based Identiv reported higher revenue and narrowed losses for the second quarter, predicting a breakeven or positive result by the end of the year, as the company’s restructuring program draws to a close.

France-based Inside Secure reported a 9% drop in revenue in the first half, which it blamed on the end of shipments of NFC chips to BlackBerry and lower sales of “legacy” EMV chips to Europe.