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NFC Times Exclusive Insight – Adding mobile payments capabilities to flagship smartphones appears to be a must-have feature as OEMs fight for market share in China’s hotly contested phone market.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – Credible reports say that Chinese smartphone manufacturer ZTE plans to join the “OEM Pay” club, and that the company has signed an agreement with payments network China UnionPay to deploy an NFC-enabled mobile payments service in China.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi is the latest OEM to announce plans to join the “Pays” club, working with payments network China UnionPay to launch an NFC-enabled mobile payments service in China, although giving no details on a launch date or participating banks.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – The decision by major Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi to include embedded secure elements in its new flagship, the Mi 5, may signal that other Chinese OEMs will also back the technology for their devices, but those embedded chips would mainly be targeted at transit ticketing applications, not payment like Apple Pay.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – With the first Apple Watch units set to be delivered this week, NFC payments for wearable devices becomes a budding market, though it remains to be seen whether consumers want to tap their watches or wristbands to pay.

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 could dethrone rival NXP Technologies as the premier supplier for Android NFC devices.

France-based Oberthur Technologies has announced its embedded secure element is included in the newest Android handset, the Mi3, from China’s popular smartphone maker Xiaomi, and predicted the chip will enable NFC mobile payment in China.

NFC Times Exclusive: Samsung Electronics has split the NFC chip supply contracts for its new Galaxy Note 3, possibly the first major NFC device that has multiple chip suppliers, NFC Times has learned.