BARCELONA - Research in Motion co-CEO Jim Balsillie on Wednesday confirmed that the majority of new BlackBerry devices this year will include near-field communication.
"Many if not most of BlackBerry devices throughout the year will have NFC in them," Balsillie said during a presentation here at Mobile World Congress.
Near-field communications is a short-range wireless protocol that requires an embedded chip and a separate reader-writer, which can program or read the contents of the chip. NFC has been used in wireless payment plans, and AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile last year teamed with Discover to offer ISIS, an NFC-based mobile payment technology.
Yesterday at MWC, Deutsche Telekom, the parent company of T-Mobile, said it will launch an NFC service known as "mobile wallet" in Europe this year, with a planned roll-out in the U.S. and beyond next year. The provider will reportedly release NFC devices from Apple, Samsung, RIM, and LG this year.
Balsillie discussed NFC BlackBerrys in November at the Web 2.0 conference, saying that "we'd be fools not to in the short term" when asked if RIM planned to add the technology to the BlackBerry. In January, Boy Genius Report leaked images and specs of what it said were four upcoming devices from RIM, many of which included NFC, but RIM declined to comment.
At MWC, Balsillie tied his NFC comments to recent carrier billing announcements. On Monday, RIM said it had reached deals with T-Mobile, Vodafone, and Telefonica to bring integrated carrier billing to BlackBerry App World. This will allow customers on those carriers to purchase apps from BlackBerry App World and charge the purchases directly to their monthly bill.