Countering a British news report published Monday, Forbes magazine on Friday said Apple's next-generation iPhone will indeed support near-field communication (NFC) technology, a mobile standard that lets users pay with their smartphones.
"From what I hear, it is possible the iPhone 5 will include NFC. An entrepreneur who is working on a top-secret NFC product told me today that he believes the iPhone 5 will have NFC and cited a friend who works at Apple as a reliable source for the information," writes Elizabeth Woyke. "To further bolster his statement, the entrepreneur said that manufacturers of NFC readers – whom he has been talking to for his own product – also expect the iPhone 5 to have NFC."
The latest secondhand rumor contradicts a report from UK's The Independent, which claimed Apple decided against including NFC because of the lack of a clear standard in the industry.
That hasn't stopped rivals Google and Research in Motion from tackling NFC. Google is reportedly testing the service in New York and San Francisco over the next few months. In November, Google chief Eric Schmidt showed off an unannounced Android phone running "Gingerbread" that included an NFC chip. The following month, Google unveiled the Nexus S, the first smartphone to feature Android 2.3 "Gingerbread." NFC was a big new feature in the Nexus S; the phone comes with a demo app that collects NFC tags and shows you the results.
At Mobile World Congress in February, RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie said most new BlackBerry devices his year will include NFC. Nokia has showed off an NFC concept phone years ago but hasn't made one commercially available yet.
Carriers are also trying to get in the lucrative mobile payment business. Last November, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon launched an NFC-based national mobile payment network called Isis.
With NFC in the iPhone, meanwhile, Apple could link mobile payments via iTunes.
To learn more about NFC, check out "What Is NFC, and Why Should You Care?"