SMARTRAC N.V., the leading developer, manufacturer, and supplier of RFID transponders and inlays, today announced Albury-based NFCWireless.com.au as the winner of its global NFCtags.com partner competition.

NFCWireless.com.au has been awarded first place in a global NFC product design competition due to the ease of use of its Tagster Hotdots and Tagster.it app, which allows anyone with an NFC phone to customize NFC tags to perform complex tasks regardless of design or technology skills. It thereby embodies the vision of NFC.

NFC Wireless' parent company Commerce In Motion has been busy this year sponsoring entrepreneurs in NFC exploration through the UTS U-Lab course in Entrepreneurship for 2012. 

iOS has been the obvious answer to this mundane and obvious question for many years. But as of this year, not anymore. According to recent Telsyte research Andoid now deliver 44% of Australian smart phone operating systems, to Apples' 43%. Given Australia's long held love affair with Apple's iPhone, this is a milestone of some note.

The drivers for this are given as lower cost devices, more choice in devices and responsive design across platforms (you don't have to build and maintain multiple versions). With Apple releasing one phone per annum and the need to now respond to smaller tablets entering the market, it will be interesting to see these same figures in a year's time.

A lot of clients ask us why NFC over QR or what situations to use each in. Here are the basics:

QR offers a link and has no production cost if being placed into printed media. At high resolution it reads well with most cameras if printed on a flat, non-reflective surface.

NFC offers over 20 additional interactions (and growing) to turn on phone functions, set preferences, launch apps, pass through data to third parties to 'order' things. It can do this because it allows data to be written and read from the tag, can be encrypted and can be used in or on almost any material or product.

NFC labels are becoming prominent in many industries as more and more smart phones are equipped with Near Field Communications (NFC). The NFC hardware in these devices lets them read NFC stickers and labels, and capture the data that is stored in them. 

With an NFC reader users can read NFC stickers and labels, and capture the data that is stored in them. Uses are booming in banking, marketing, and finance fields but NFC labels can also be extremely helpful in healthcare as well.

NFCWireless.com.au has enabled Falls Creek to become the first town in Australia, and one of very few worldwide, to be fully connected using Near Field Communication (NFC).

NFC is an emerging technology that is set to become an enabler for an estimated $170Bn in Global transactions in the next 3-5 years. 

9 of the top 10 new phone handsets include NFC technology with a myriad of other devices also having the technology on board, the opportunities are looming very large.