It's a well-known fact that Apple and its Android competitors fight all the time, but now one piece of mobile technology from the iPhone has been discovered on Android-powered devices. Tim Cook must be fuming by now.
You see, the iPhone's Passbook app can store cash-saving vouchers, gift certificates, airline tickets, theatre passes and similar things, along with QR codes on iThing screens that are scanned by a reader to enable their use. Apple could wirelessly transfer this data using NFC, as used by pay-by-wave systems, but its gadgets don't implement the technology - unlike rival Android devices.
But Apple published the Passbook voucher format so that app developers on other platforms can work with other companies buying into the Passbook system.
And software developer Attido has done just that by building Android app PassWallet that can use a phone's NFC electronics for pay-by-swipe with the phone.
PassWallet can also flash up QR codes to use a token, but if the person reading the voucher is using Skycore's CodeReader then a swipe will do just as well.
NFC World spoke to Skycore, which has high hopes for the NFC capabilities of Android, and firmly believe swiping a cell phone is the future of token redemption.
You have to wonder how long Apple can survive without NFC before iDevices start looking distinctly dated. But we're reasonably confident that Apple is already addressing the issue and will provide a fix soon.
Some still argue that Near Field Communications is a technology looking for a problem, but the investment is now so great that even if it has no long-term future it's going to be everywhere for the next few years, and Apple surely won't be able to resist joining the bandwagon.
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