Qualcomm, the chip maker whose business is built almost entirely around processors and radios for mobile applications, is reportedly making a run at buying NXP, which pretty much owns the NFC chip business. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that a deal could come before the end of the year. NXP is a public company with a current market capitalization of $28 billion; its … [Read more...]
Fitbit Promises New Trackers This Year, Probably Including NFC
When Fitbit announced its quarterly results yesterday, CEO James Park said that the company would announce "more new products for this holiday season that we've ever had before." Given the company's iffy record of making holiday ship dates, that may translate to "two or three." The top of the company's line are the Charge HR, the Surge, and the Blaze. The Blaze was announced … [Read more...]
Swatch to Sell NFC Watch Next Year
Swatch, the Swiss watchmaking giant, says it will sell an analog watch next year with an NFC payment chip linked to the Visa payment network. The Bellamy line of watches will be sold in the United States, Switzerland, and Brazil starting next year. The first two countries are pretty obvious; Brazil is the home of the 2016 Olympics, of which Visa is a global sponsor. The … [Read more...]
Jawbone Announces UP4, including Amex NFC Payments
Jawbone, which is just now getting its long-delayed UP3 fitness tracker to market, is already talking about the next version, the UP4. The major differenceis apparently the addition of an NFC chip that will link the device to your American Express card and use it for contactless credit card payments. Jawbone says the UP4 will be available this summer, but no pricing was … [Read more...]
MWC Day 1: ams and ST Team Up on Payment Chip Systems
If you follow the sensor and microelectronics business, you may know that ams and STElectronics are top-flight companies and strong rivals. But they announced at Mobile World Congress that they've teamed up for just this one thing: mobile payments. ST has a secure element that stores and encrypts payment data. ams has a lot of skill in antenna and NFC technology. So they … [Read more...]
Five Small Items in an Apple Watch Roundup
There's a bunch of little pieces in the news about the Apple Watch, none of them really worth their own abstract. So we're pulling them all into one briefing: -- Two hospitals will be experimenting with Apple's HealthKit software, coming at the end of this week in iOS8. Stanford University Hospital is working with Apple on bloodlessly measuring glucose levels. And Duke … [Read more...]
Wearable Tech to Replace Cash at Lollapalooza Music Festival
The idea of using a wristband as an identity token in the hospitality industry is not quite new; Disney's using it quite effectively as MagicBands at Walt Disney World. Now, the folks putting on the Lollapalooza music festival this summer in Chicago are doing something similar: giving attendees wristbands that can be linked to credit cards. Wearers can tap the bands to vendors' … [Read more...]
Google ships Android 4.4 KitKat; Small Footprint Could Aid Wearables
Google has shipped version 4.4 of its Android operating system; it refers to it as KitKat. (Google names Android versions after sweets, in alphabetical order.) There's lots of discussion about what, exactly, this means for wearables. One stated goal of KitKat is to reduce the size of the OS so it will run on older Android devices. Fragmentation has become a big problem for … [Read more...]