INSIDE Contactless and Mobile Distillery have announced that they've formed a 'unique' industry partnership to create a new NFC mobile application development platform. It's claimed the partnership will boost the development of NFC applications for the Wave-Me NFC services platform by making it easier for software makers to write applications once and deploy them across a broad range of NFC-enabled handsets.
Called "Celsius for Wave-Me" the new NFC mobile application development platform combines Mobile Distillery's Celsius mobile application production framework with INSIDE Contactless' Wave-Me Service Engine, a key component of the Wave-Me NFC services platform. This is an end-to-end solution that mobile carriers and third-party service providers can use to give subscribers access to a broad range of NFC consumer services and applications through their handsets. Celsius for Wave-Me will also include deeply integrated connectivity to INSIDE's market-leading MicroRead NFC chip and software, enabling NFC mobile applications to be optimised for performance with access to advanced proprietary features of the NFC chip.
"Along with our Wave-Me services platform for carriers and third-party service providers, the Celsius for Wave-Me will be a key component of the NFC ecosystem," said Loic Hamon, vice-president of marketing, NFC Business Line at INSIDE Contactless. "It'll provide a platform that NFC application developers can use to efficiently address the diversity of handsets on the market today and in the future. We look forward to working with Mobile Distillery as we take this important step forward in the NFC market."
It's claimed that Celsius for Wave-Me will help mobile network operators overcome the major hurdle of wanting to provide easy access to services but also wanting to wait until the deployment of NFC-enabled handsets fully ramps up. Celsius for Wave-Me allows developers to use its patented Parametric Development feature to automatically adapt their source code at compilation time. This creates applications that can read either QR Code (visual 2D bar code tags) or traditional NFC tags depending on the capabilities of the target handset.
"As the leader in solutions for mobile application development we're excited to be working with the leader in NFC technology to create Celsius for Wave-Me," said Vincent Berge, CEO at Mobile Distillery. "Developers addressing the Wave-Me services platform will now have a powerful way of deploying their applications across a wide range of handsets."
A beta release Celsius NFC for Wave-Me is expected to be available in the first quarter of 2010 for selected partners. The Celsius for Wave-Me licence will be free for the development stage of any project, and will be updated to include new NFC phones, additional NFC stickers and add-ons as they become available, offering 'the most widespread access to NFC functionality'.