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WIMA is the world’s foremost NFC conference, and took place in Monaco this week. For the past few years Nokia has been a driving force at WIMA, and Nokia has been showing off its NFC wares again this year.

Sami Pippuri, Head of Product Marketing at Nokia Developer Experience, explains: “We’ve been talking about Nokia’s position in the NFC industry, product portfolio, NFC enabled devices and Nokia Gear products. At the expo we’ve been showing the latest devices and the ecosystem around them.

As part of Nokia’s presence at WIMA, the company has held an NFC developer workshop, teaching developers how to implement NFC applications and solutions on the Windows Phone 8 platform.

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Tomi Penttilä, Head of Nokia Gear and Jure Sustersic, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Nokia Developer Experience, both made speeches about NFC yesterday, with workshops on Thursday. There’s been a demo area to show off hardware and third party apps, and a competition for developers. 

Sami adds: “We’re differentiating ourselves both in terms of consumers and developers; we’re looking to provide new sorts of functionality, and we’re looking at clever ways to take advantage of NFC, as illustrated by NearSpeak.

NearSpeak is an app that lets people interact with NFC tags, leaving behind voice messages. “When other people touch the tag, it will read back the message in the user’s own language,” Sami explains. “These sorts of new novel things are the outcome we’re looking for when it comes to WIMA, inspiring developers to create something that hasn’t been done before.”

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NearSpeak isn’t the only app that Nokia has been showing off at WIMA, with a McDonald’s app also receiving an update especially for the event. The app lets you order food on your Lumia in advance. Just tap your phone when you arrive, and it’ll let you bypass the regular queue. The app demoed at WIMA is an upgrade of the GoMcDo app developed by Airtag. It’s available in more than 70 restaurants in France, and the NFC feature will be live for summer.

Other apps at the show included the Michelin Travel Guide app, which enables Lumia owners to discover and get more out of their visit to a Michelin rated restaurant, Nokia NFC Writer and Nokia Music, which allows for user generated custom music tags. There’s also Vimeo, which facilitates sharing of high quality videos by a simple tap.

WIMA has been a chance for Nokia to demonstrate its hardware as well. Tomi explains: “We’ll be showing and talking about accessories such as the new Nokia Wireless Charging Car Holder and JBL PowerUp speakers that have both pairing and connecting by NFC.

“With NFC-enabled Nokia Gear products now in the hands of consumers, it’s time for the industry to take note,” concludes Tomi.

Tags:
NFC
Nokia
WIMA