Up until the iPhone 4S was announced last month, conjecture about its features and functions swirled for months beforehand. Well, the rumor mill is already starting to turn for the iPhone 5, which won’t come out until sometime next year. According to reports from tech industry site DigiTimes, Apple will be adding near-field communications, the technology that enables users to use their iPhones as wallets, to its next-generation iPhone.
Currently only about 10 percent of smartphones on the market make use of NFC technology, but according to Taiwan-based phone manufacturers, that number could rise to 50 percent by 2013.
As far as Apple goes, it only makes sense for the company to bring NFC to the iPhone since it has hundreds of millions of iTunes customers its database who could waive the phone near an NFC sensor at a checkout station, enter an Apple ID password on the iPhone, and pay for things.
Read more at CNET.
