Sony cares not for your talk of slow NFC adoption rates and consumer apathy towards the technology.
In fact, in a time when some are doubting NFC’s short-term utility as a payments technology, Sony has gone full steam ahead with an extensive new line of NFC products designed not only to help you pay, but to let you listen to music, view photos and videos and more.
“Sony has the largest range of NFC-enabled devices with built-in One-touch functions,” the company claims.
And from what they’ve revealed at the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show to this point, it’s hard to argue with that assertion.
As NFC World highlights, Sony has launched two new smartphones, four portable speakers, two headsets and multiple TVs to its NFC line, with the Xperia Z smartphone serving as its featured item.
The Xperia Z is a water-resistant Android phone with a 5-inch HD 1080p screen, 13 megapixel camera, 4GLTE and a Snapdragon S4 Pro quad-core processor. It will be released at some point during the first quarter, along with its smaller counterpart, the Xperia ZL.
From a payments perspective, this is Sony’s most relevant CES revelation as an increasing number of higher-end phones are coming equipped with NFC. Samsung’s Galaxy S III and select others immediately come to mind, and it looks like this could be a trend that continues from iPhone competitors in the near future.
The other devices may not be relevant from a payments perspective, but they still seem pretty cool. Instantly transmitting media from your phone to your TV could certainly be useful, and it’s not difficult to think of some practical uses for an NFC headset either.
This raises an interesting question: if you don’t see NFC factoring into mobile payments soon, are you down on the technology as a whole, or just when it comes to payments? Do household NFC products like these interest you?
Let us know in the comments below: it could spark an interesting debate.
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