14 DAY TRIAL // Leading provider of advanced, open-standard contactless chip technologies INSIDE Contactless announced today the release of its Open NFC commercial-grade NFC protocol stack in a free and open source edition under the Apache License, Version 2.0. According to the company, the new Open NFC 3.4 comes with consistent API across all NFC hardware, and can offer faster time to market to OEMs, not to mention a greater flexibility, along with support for WinCE 6.0 (compatible with Windows Mobile 7) and Linux 2.6 platforms. Moreover, it also revealed that Open NFC 3.5 should land at the end of March, and that it would include support for Google's Android platform.
According to the company, the release of an open source NFC protocol stack is expected to increase interoperability of NFC devices, which should result in a faster adoption on the market. “Our decision to release Open NFC under the Apache license demonstrates our willingness to lead the way in bringing high quality, well documented NFC software into the open source arena,” said Philippe Martineau, executive vice president of the NFC business line for INSIDE Contactless. “Open NFC fits right in with the trend toward open platforms in the mobile industry, and will benefit device makers as well as software developers and others in the mobile ecosystem in several ways, providing greater impetus to implementing NFC solutions across a broad range of consumer products.”
The newly unveiled Open NFC protocol stack is said to offer a complete NFC middleware solution for handsets, as well as for embedded products and other devices. It comes with support for various levels of functionality, including low-level RF control or high-level NFC Forum tag handling, as well as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi pairing, or interactions with single-wire protocol SIMs. Thus, INSIDE's move has been already saluted by a series of mobile phone makers and other industry players, including Motorola, Orange or Qualcomm, which now offers two complete NFC handset reference designs.
“Qualcomm understands the increasing importance of open source and community-driven software to the mobile industry, particularly as customer demand for open and flexible software coupled with powerful mobile hardware platforms continues to increase,” John Elliott, senior director of Emerging Connectivity Technologies at Qualcomm CDMA Technologies commented on the announcement. “It is a great pleasure to see NFC move closer to the open source community, and INSIDE Contactless is one of the visionary companies making this happen.”