NFC TIMES Exclusive – Japan’s Sony Corp. is supporting host card emulation with its proprietary FeliCa contactless technology, which could enable service providers to avoid the need for secure elements in rolling out FeliCa-based applications on NFC phones.
Sony has released a specification for FeliCa running on HCE, and this month has confirmed that the technology works on the first two devices–both Google Nexus models released in 2015, the Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P. The devices will work with FeliCa and HCE only after they are updated with the latest Android operating system, 7.0, known as Nougat.
Other Android devices would support FeliCa with HCE once they are updated to 7.0 or above and carry the right NFC controller. They would still have to be tested by Sony or other implementers of FeliCa technology. The Nexus 6P and 5X both sport NFC controllers, the PN548, from NXP Semiconductors, which has a license to support FeliCa technology.