Competing with Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone is never easy — the handset has been the world’s most popular single smartphone model for years, and has made Apple the most valuable company in the world — but according to a new report, NFC will serve as Apple rivals’ best bet for differentiating their devices from the iPhone 5. Apple basically called the short-range wireless data transfer technology a solution without a problem, but according to Digitimes’ unnamed industry sources, “the lack of NFC (near field communication) functionality in the latest iPhone model will allow rival brands to differentiate their products and to become priority partners for launching NFC-enabled applications and services in cooperation with financial and telecom service companies.”
Digitimes’ Daniel Shen and Steve Shen continued, “Since a number of smartphone platforms, including Android, BlackBerry, Symbian and Bada as well as the forthcoming Windows Phone 8, all support NFC technology, financial firms, telecom carriers and advertisement agencies, among others, are likely to tie up with non-iPhone vendors to launch NFC-enabled services.”
Apple announced on Monday that it sold more than 5 million iPhone 5 handsets during the new phone’s first three days of availability, leaving rival companies with a lot of work to do with NFC if they hope to keep pace.
