ReadWriteMobile

The top cellular carriers in the United States do not often play nice with each other. Yet, when there is a common enemy on the horizon, even the fiercest of rivals will band together to keep from being pushed aside. That is apparently what AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon are doing by jointly investing $100 million in Isis, an NFC mobile payment solution set to battle Google's Wallet project.

According to Bloomberg, the carriers may invest hundreds of millions of dollars in the NFC solution to battle Google Wallet. Mobile payments may be a $670 billion industry by 2015, making the early moves by all the players extremely important.

NFC, or near field communication, is a term that's often associated with mobile payments and mobile wallet applications this year, especially with new launches like Google Wallet and Visa's digital wallet service underway. But NFC as a technology has more use cases than that.

One new example, which just debuted this week, is a chip that makes your car keys the jumping off point to access driver-friendly mobile apps. Just wave your phone over your keys to track down your car's location, plan your route, diagnose that pesky "check engine" light and more.

According to a report from Bloomberg, future webOS-based phones and tablets from HP may include support for NFC, or near field communication. This short-range wireless technology enables the exchange of data between short distances, and serves as the backbone for upcoming mobile payment and mobile wallet systems, including the newly launched "Google Wallet," Visa's digital wallet and others.

RIM has released its BlackBerry Java SDK v7.0 into beta, which allows mobile developers to build applications for the new version of the BlackBerry operating system, BlackBerry 7 OS. Among other things, the SDK offers app developers device integration capabilities for access to the phone's features, including the magnetometer (compass), location data, maps and more.

It also adds support for NFC (near field communications), the short range wireless technology that enables the forthcoming digital wallets and mobile payments systems, in addition to serving as a barcode scanning replacement technology. The first NFC-enabled BlackBerry phones, the BlackBerry Bold 9900 and 9930, are due out later this summer.

Isis, the NFC-enabled mobile payments venture led by three of the top four U.S. mobile operators, Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile, is accelerating and broadening the scope of its offering, not scaling back, as The Wall St. Journal recently reported. This is according to Jaymee Johnson, Isis' Marketing head, who also says that the group was "very displeased" with WSJ's article, which he called "massively misleading." But the Journal had picked up on something going on within Isis: change.

Instead of going to market with one issuer and one payment network, as originally planned, Isis is planning to partner with multiple issuers and networks, Johnson explains.

This week, on ReadWriteWeb, we reported on a survey run by MasterCard, which found that 63% of the younger generation was ready and eager for NFC (near field communication) and mobile payments. According to the survey results, those aged 18-34 are comfortable with the idea of using their phone for purchases, as compared with older generation (35+). Of course, MasterCard's survey was designed to ensure a reliable and accurate sampling of the U.S. population...which makes us wonder: how much higher would this percentage be if you just asked early adopters the same question? Want to find out? Play along with us by sharing your thoughts in this week's ReadWriteMobile poll.

ViVOtech may not be a household name like Google, Visa, MasterCard or even VeriFone, but it is a company at the forefront of the NFC industry. This software-and-systems company connects banks, retail stores and mobile phone providers who are offering NFC products and services to consumers. More recently, ViVOtech has been named by reporters as a partner in building Google's upcoming mobile wallet service.

As anticipated, BlackBerry maker RIM has announced the launch of new smartphones with NFC (near field communication) capabilities at its BlackBerry World conference in Orlando, Florida today. The forthcoming BlackBerry Bold 9900 and the accompanying CDMA mode, the 9930, will support NFC read/write operations when they debut later this summer. RIM is also actively working on partnerships with banks and credit card companies, we're told, to offer mobile wallet and/or mobile payment functionalities, but has nothing specific to announce on that front at this time.

Mobile marketing solutions provider Blue Bite and digital media company Reach Media Group (RMG) are teaming up to deploy NFC technology to over a third of RMG's 200,000 digital screens over the next six months.  In addition, Blue Bite is working with other partner networks to bring its total NFC deployment to 200,000 screens across the U.S. These digital screens, such as those found in malls, theaters, bars, clubs, gyms, airplanes, taxis, and elsewhere, allow advertisers to display video ads to millions of viewers per month. RMG, in particular, provides access to over 70 million viewers monthly.

Now those viewers will be able to learn more about any given advertiser using NFC technology. Simply put, it's one of the largest commercial rol-outs of NFC-based advertising this country has seen so far.

MasterCard has been looking into mobile payments since 2001, says James Anderson, VP, Mobile at MasterCard. It has explored the industry by offering things like PayPass-enabled credit cards, PayPass key fobs and even PayPass stickers, all of which allow consumers to pay for items with tapping, instead of swiping a card. Today, the company is delving into the use of an emerging technology called NFC, or near field communication.

In 2011, Anderson says we'll see a number of rollouts of NFC initiatives from MasterCard, including SIM-based solutions, embedded solutions and the continued deployments of NFC tags. By 2012, these efforts will have ramped up significantly.