Apple Patent Hints That iPhone Display Could Be Used As An RFID Transponder

By Matthew Chung on 10/05/2010, filed in Home > Apple

Apple has been placing a lot of focus on NFC (Near Field Communications) recently, and now the fruity company has been granted a new patent that brings its devices one step closer to being able to pay for your grocery shopping. The latest patent covers the usage of a device that functions both as an RFID tag reader and a tag. The patent also states that the RFID antenna could be placed in the touch sensor panel, which would mean that the touch panel could be used as an RFID transponder, therefore eliminating the need for a separate space-consuming RFID antenna. Could this mean that the next-generation iPhone could offer RFID support from the get go?

Apple Inc: Apple Inc was founded in 1976 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne as a computer company wich is often credited to have initiated personal computing. After a meteoric rise in the 80s, Apple had lost the personal computing battle against Microsoft and others in the 90s. But in the late 90s and early 2000s, the company came back to profitability by focusing on less products and started using industry-standard components. Apple's largest business is now in the smartphone space, with the iPhone representing more than half of the revenues and an even larger part of the profits. Read our Apple product reviews to see what the company has been up to: iPhone 5 Review, Macbook Pro with Retina display review

iPhone: iPhone: The iPhone is Apple's line of smartphones. That was also the original name of the first iPhone, which was announced on January 9th 2007 by Steve Jobs during the Macworld Keynote. The iPhone was released to the public in June of the same year. The development of the iPhone started in 2004, was internally called "project purple" and was the fruit of a collaboration between Apple and AT&T. Since then, Apple has released new iPhone models every year, with the iPhone 3G in July 2008, the iPhone 3GS in June 2009, the iPhone 4 in June 2010, the iPhone 4S in October 2011 and the iPhone 5 in September 2012. The iPhone represented more than half of Apple's revenues in 2012.

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