Recent research by IMS Research has indicated that shipments of the Near Field Communications (NFC)-equipped smartphone will increase from 80 million in 2012 to 900 million in 2016, as the use of “Tap and Use” applications has increased tremendously.
The “Tap and Use” applications can be created on mobile devices integrated with NFC.
Cashing in on this trend, many developers have started creating more and more apps for NFC-equipped smartphone. In an effort to help these developers design and test the information exchange applications based on NFC Forum Type 2 Tag technology, Infineon Technologies has launched a new NFC tag application developer kit.
The kit is available currently for the North American market.
The new NFC Tag Developer Kit provides developers with the tools to enable the development of "Tap and Use" applications based on Near Field Communication (NFC) technology.
As a company offering a portfolio of NFC Forum compliant tag solutions with usable memory sizes ranging from 128 bytes usable to two kilo bytes, Infineon expects its new development kit for tag applications to help fuel innovation in the growing NFC ecosystem.
The NFC Forum is a not-for-profit industry association that advances the use of Near Field Communication (NFC) technology.
The “Tap and Use” applications link between a mobile devices and tags that are embedded in objects. The tags require no attached power source and respond to the RF energy emitted by an NFC-radio device within 10 cm.
The embedded tags can be programmed with a short message or URL pointer to a website. It can be used to make signs and posters in retail environments “smart” as well.
These tags also provide easy check-in to locations for consumer-oriented services.
Infineon’s NFC Application Developer kit includes SLE66 R01 Series NFC tags in two form factors and a SLE 66R32 in a card form factor, programming information and application notes.
Other key features of the toolkit include: intelligent EEPROM with contactless interface compliant to ISO/IEC 1443 Type A and support of NFC Forum Type 2 Tag Operation; operation frequency of 13.56MHz; data rate up to 848kbits/s from PICC to PCD 106hbits/s from PCD to PICC; read/write distance up to 10cm; and up to 2048 bytes available as dynamic memory structure.
Priced at $99, the kit is available via the company’s distribution partner. The tags have either 128 byte or 2kbytes of usable memory as defined for NFC Forum Type 2 Tag operation.
Recently, the company raised its level of membership from Associate to Principal member at the NFC Forum. Some of the other companies that joined the forum recently include Canon, HP and Yahoo! JAPAN.
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Edited by
Braden Becker
