HTC, Sharp, and ZTE gearing up for NFC smartphones

The smartphone manufacturer HTC is planning to launch its NFC featured handsets very soon in collaboration with Sharp and ZTE. The company has recently announced that it is joining the NFC forum, as per Pocket lint.

The NFC Forum is a non-profit industry association, which advances the use of Near Field Communication (NFC) technology. It has also confirmed that Barclaycard has already joined.

While that isn’t a limitation for including the technology in the latest and smartest handsets, it is just a step towards taking the technology seriously.

All of these three are few of the 26 new brands to join the forum, which works the same way to the Blu-ray Disc Association.

"Our newest members demonstrate the broad appeal of the work of the NFC Forum, and the variety of sectors that are represented emphasises the value NFC technology can provide to businesses and consumers," said Koichi Tagawa, chairman of the NFC Forum. "We are pleased to welcome these new organisations' participation in our work, and their contributions to the global NFC ecosystem."

Barclaycard appears to be quite excited over the deal, as these companies not just signed up, but actually have emerged as one of the leading members of the forum with a membership on the board.

"I believe that NFC is fundamental to the future of payments and the wider mobile experience," said Val Soranno Keating, CEO, Barclaycard. "We've been the leader of the UK's contactless payments market since launching the first cards and merchant terminals in September 2007. More than four out of five cards and an even higher percentage of terminals are still supplied by Barclays."

Further more, "Having established the infrastructure, we can now offer customers choice in the way they pay and, in partnership with a mobile operator, we introduced the UK's first payment-enabled mobile phone this summer. We're also working in the US and Africa to bring the convenience of contactless payments to consumers and retailers. I'm delighted that we are joining the NFC Forum, and I look forward to Barclaycard playing a central role in the advance of this important technology."

Other handset manufacturers already pushing NFC are comprised of  BlackBerry, Samsung and Nokia, who have already introduced their NFC enabled smartphones in the market.