APPLE ANNOUNCES NFC FOR IPHONE

Apple’s much anticipated annual keynote event took place today - and the announcements created a great deal of excitement around tech and marketing circles. The company announced the latest versions of iPhone based off of the radical redesign from last year’s iPhone X, and finally we saw Apple integrate NFC into the new versions of the iPhone. This is a massive step forward for content owners and marketers and delivers a huge boost for companies developing platforms & solutions for the Internet of Things.

The key announcements during the event were:

Apple Watch Series 4 is set to become an intelligent guardian for your health

The event kicked off with a redesign of Apple Watch, since its debut more than three years ago. The watch now comes with a bigger screen, pushing the display to the edge while the body of the watch is slightly thinner but bulkier than the previous versions.

But more importantly, it comes with some life saving features such as its ability to detect and notify users if they have an elevated heart rate. It also includes a feature called Fall Detection. This means that if the device senses that you are immobile for a minute after a fall, it automatically makes an emergency call and sends your location to emergency contacts on your device. It is the first ECG product offered over the counter, direct to consumers.

Apple Watch is now not just a nice-to-have device, but could soon become a necessity for health conscious people across the world.

Big iPhone news - quite literally

As speculated, Apple also released a larger sized iPhone taking the features of last year's iPhone X and putting them into a bigger screen with better performance. Apple announced iPhone XS with a 5.8 inch OLED super retina display and a 6.5 inch iPhone XS Max which is almost the same size of iPhone 8 Plus, but with a much bigger display.

The new iPhone comes in three different colours: space grey, silver and gold (bring back the gold). The glass finish is more durable and dust and water resistant with IP68 rating meaning the phone can be submerged to a maximum depth of 1.5m for up to 30 minutes. The device comes with an A12 bionic processor equipped with industry’s first nanometre chip. So basically, the device can process five trillion operations per second - yes, that’s huge!

And as for the frequent international travellers, the iPhone also comes with a much needed dual SIM support which is often standard in other phones.  

And for the price conscious buyers…  iPhone XR

The tech giant also released a more affordable option called the iPhone Xr. It comes with the same processor as iPhone Xs and Xs Max but uses cheaper materials and a single rear camera making it slightly more affordable at $1,229 in Australia.

It comes in six different colours - White, black, red, yellow, coral and a personal favorite blue. It comes with a standard 64GB storage but also has options for 128GB and 256GB of storage.   

But wait… There’s more to it

Something Apple didn’t mention during the event was that the new iPhones will allow users to scan NFC tags without an app using a new background tag reading feature. With the release of iOS 12, Apple will unlock the potential of NFC installed in millions of modern iPhones.

The NFC chip in Apple devices is capable of reading any NFC tag but, so far, the company has confined it to Apple Pay alone. Unlocking the NFC chip will open up fresh opportunities for developers and makes it possible to use NFC to open car, home locks and hotel rooms.

The decision to open up NFC may mean that other payment providers will be able to provide more payment services via iPhones and NFC. Hopefully, Apple may also enable retailers to link Apple Pay purchases to existing loyalty schemes. That’s good news for consumers but it also means more money in the bank for developers, who will integrate it all. A move to enable NFC means that virtual items such as tickets, boarding cards etc become even more accessible to use and easier to track. These business sectors operate at a global scale with thousands of stakeholders. Managing technology deployment across such a vast ecosystem is set to become a lucrative business for developers and marketers.

With this announcement Apple is making a statement of intent that NFC is the next big technology to change the way we connect as people. People will expect to tap their phone for a deep personalised interaction, friction will be removed in what we call the customer journey. This is an exciting opportunity for companies who are trying to find new ways to connect with consumers.

To find out more about NFC marketing opportunities and the Tapit NFC marketing platform contact me on linked in or at [email protected] or www.geronimo.co

Matt Hunt, CEO & Founder Geronimo, Director Tapit NFC Marketing.