Tim Cook Introduces the iPhone 5 on September 12, 2012

Based on Apple’s press conference on September 12, their strategy can be described as: change customer behavior now, encourage an upgrade later.

The Apple wallet going to be called “Passbook.” It works without an NFC chip, relying instead on geolocation to determine if an iPhone user is in the proximity of a compatible terminal. Geolocation is clearly not permanent solution because it includes obvious problems, such as: unwanted notifications (if you ever want to be notified that you can use your Starbucks card, for example, you’ll be notified whenever you can possibly use your Starbucks card, whether you want to or not), and imperfect functionality indoors (when you are in a shopping mall, GPS has a hard time figuring out exactly where you are).

So if geolocation is not the ideal permanent solution, why did Apple exclude NFC from the iPhone 5? Continue reading →