Apple to update iOS to support NFC in 2012?

By Tyler Lee on 11/22/2011, filed in Home > Apple

Apple to update iOS to support NFC in 2012? We know that an iPhone with NFC is an old rumor, but it seems that it has managed to be revived again with a new report by Digitimes. The report is claiming that according to smartphone manufacturers, Apple has plans to add support to iOS come 2012 and possibly in conjunction with the next iPhone.

NFC for phones has yet to take off in a big way save for countries like Japan where NFC is being used on a daily basis. Google is attempting to form their own mobile payment services with Google Wallet, but unfortunately it seems that it is limited to Sprint customers who own the Samsung Galaxy S phone which is little strange if they’re trying to encourage adoption.

Apple themselves are no strangers to NFC technology, having been granted patents that reveal various uses for NFC technology. However rumors surrounding Apple’s plans for their new products have always been more miss than hit, so we suggest that you might want to take this with a grain of salt for now.

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

iOS: was once upon a time called iPhone OS, or "operating system", which is the software that provides all the basic device functionality and is the interface between the hardware and applications. iOS was introduced with the iPhone on January 9 2007, and it was originally not intended to be programmable by third parties. Steve Jobs had envisioned that developers could create Web Apps that would run in the browser. This changed less than one year after when the iPhone SDK (software development kit) was introduced in October 2007. Today, hundreds of thousands of apps have been created for this platform. iPhone OS became iOS on June 2010. Interestingly, both iPhone and iOS were former trademarks of Cisco, that Apple now uses under a license.

iPhone 5: The iPhone 5 (read our iPhone 5 review) is a smartphone from Apple. It was launched on Sept 12 2012 and features a 4" display, 4G LTE, a thinner chassis and a faster A6 processor. At the time of its launch, it was obviously the best iPhone yet, but a large number of customers and observers came out very divided about its feature set. The lack of large screen was a main point of friction and many wished that there was a larger iPhone 5. FB Survey: are you impressed by the iPhone 5? Tell the world.

NFC: stands for Near Field Communication, which is a standard for low-speed wireless short range communications between electronic devices. Popular applications of NFC are public transportation passes and some form of electronic wallet, but many more applications remains to be tested and implemented. NFC is a cousin of RFID and uses some of the same communications protocols.

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