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France-based vendor Gemalto Thursday confirmed its growth projections for 2014 and its longer-term forecast for 2017, despite the recent announcements of support for host-card emulation by Visa and MasterCard.

NFC Times Exclusive: Samsung Electronics has switched back to an NFC controller chip from NXP Semiconductors for most of the planned shipments of its new flagship, the Galaxy S5, but the phones will not pack NXP’s embedded secure element, NFC Times has learned.

NFC Times Exclusive: The cost and complexity of loading and provisioning applications on secure elements in NFC phones has held back mobile-payments rollouts and added to the growing interest of such alternatives as host-card emulation, Bluetooth low energy, even QR codes, observers agree.

Two of Hong Kong’s largest banks, HSBC and Hang Seng, have announced plans to launch NFC mobile payments on SIM cards with Hong Kong’s major mobile operators, but using their own Android apps. Meanwhile, interest in embedded secure elements among banks remains high in the market.

China’s NFC market continues to gather steam, with No. 3 telco, China Telecom, announcing a nationwide launch Thursday and one of China’s largest commercial financial institutions, China Merchants Bank, introducing mobile payment on embedded chips in three Samsung NFC devices.  

NFC Times Exclusive: With Broadcom scoring an unexpected design win to supply NFC chips to Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S4 earlier this year, and the U.S.-based chip maker gaining an endorsement from Google for its NFC technology, it looked like Broadcom might dethrone rival NXP Technologies as the premier supplier for Android NFC devices.

NFC Times Exclusive: France-based Gemalto today reported higher revenue in the third quarter for its mobile-payments platforms as well as increased shipments of NFC SIMs and dual-interface banking cards.

NFC Times Exclusive: French mobile operators are delaying their nationwide rollout, citing interoperability problems between TSMs and SIMs provided by different vendors, among other issues, NFC Times has learned.

The trial puts a MasterCard PayPass debit application onto SIM cards that run in the Samsung Galaxy S III.