Qualcomm joins NFC Forum board

LONDON – Mobile communications company Qualcomm Inc. has upgraded is membership of the NFC Forum to the sponsor level, which includes a seat on the board of directors. Qualcomm (San Diego) was previously a principal member of the non-profit industry association.

Qualcomm is the 13th company to be granted sponsor status. Other sponsors include Broadcom, NEC, Nokia, NXP, Renesas, Samsung, Sony, STMicroelectronics and Visa. Qualcomm's new status in the forum allows it to propose initiatives and participate in testing and certification program.

Near-field communications is a short-range communications channel that operates at 13.56-MHz at data rates up to about 500-kbit/s. It can support passive tags with preset information powered by NFC readers. It is also expected to become widely used for making financial payments by smartphone. Other applications include access control, transportation, healthcare, information collection and exchange, loyalty coupons and payments.

Companies that have departed from the NFC sponsor level membership in the last year include: Barclaycard, Microsoft and NTT Docomo.

"Qualcomm has actively contributed to the advancement of near field communication through its leadership roles in the technical and ecosystem committees of the NFC Forum," David Favreau, vice president of product management at Qualcomm Atheros, said in a statement.

The forum also said Kovio Inc. has raised its membership level from associate to principal. Twenty-two organizations from different industry sectors have recently joined the forum. An influx of a hardware companies as members demonstrates growing interest in making NFC-enabled devices, the forum said.