We already have designer phones, but phones made for special occasions is a pretty novel concept. Yet, that's precisely what Samsung and VISA will be doing, creating an NFC-enabled phone which is to appear in time for the London Olympics 2012.
The goal is evidently to promote mobile payments via the embedded NFC chip, and VISA says the phone will work at 160 000 of its terminals in Europe, 70 000 of which are in shops and pubs in the UK. Sandra Alzetta from VISA has been caught on tape to title the upcoming Samsung device "iconic", so it probably will be a high-end handset, and it is also said to sport dedicated Olympic content preloaded.
It's not exactly clear if this will be an Android or bada device, as Samsung is putting NFC chips in both, but it will be an interesting experiment regardless. VISA also says it is prepping microSD cards with NFC connectivity to spearhead the mass market adoption of mobile payments. Knowing how big the payment processing company is, this might be the best shot mobile payments have to take off.
Judging by the picture from VISA's presentation, the Samsung Olympics 2012 phone will be available globally in the first quarter of next year.
A discussion is a place, where people can voice their opinion, no matter if it
is positive, neutral or negative. However, when posting, one must stay true to the topic, and not just share some
random thoughts, which are not directly related to the matter.
Things that are NOT allowed:
Off-topic talk - you must stick to the subject of discussion
Offensive, hate speech - if you want to say something, say it politely
Spam/Advertisements - these posts are deleted
Multiple accounts - one person can have only one account
Impersonations and offensive nicknames - these accounts get banned
Moderation is done by humans. We try to be as objective as possible and moderate with zero bias. If you think a
post should be moderated - please, report it.
Have a question about the rules or why you have been moderated/limited/banned? Please,
contact us.
FCC OKs Cingular\'s purchase of AT&T Wireless
Things that are NOT allowed: