SCHED* SXSW 2011

event::type Panel → Interactive
Venue: Austin Convention Center, Ballroom E (500 E Cesar Chavez St)
Speaker: Robert Sprogis, David Berkowitz
About: How Near Field Communication (NFC) and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) will change the wireless industry, user experiences, marketing, and shopping. Mobile phones a now being looked as a ubiquitous device that plays an increasingly important role in our lives. The mobile phone started as a tool to talk to people while away from a landline. Apps began to emerge on legacy phones, with the networks controlling content. Smart phones and most importantly the Iphone changed this stranglehold on content by creating an open developer ecosystem. Now the mobile phone is more akin to a computer than a phone. As the mobile phone increases in importance and new features are integrated such as RFID and NFC technologies the functions the mobile phone is used for will likewise increase. Today we use the mobile phone to use apps and surf the net. Tomorrow we will use the mobile phone to open doors (literally), pay for our purchases, earn loyalty rewards, redeem coupons and much more. The introduction of NFC and RFID into the mobile phone, which is a certainty, will not only change how we as users engage with our environment but also how retailers and marketers as well as network operators do business. Network operators will begin to look more like credit card companies, marketers and retailers will now be able to track purchases and redemption of coupons, in turn rewarding these behaviors with loyalty reward points.