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INSIDE Contactless and CONNECTHINGS Team to Take NFC to the Next LevelAIX-EN-PROVENCE, France & PARIS --(Business Wire)-- INSIDE Contactless (News - Alert), the world leader in advanced open-standard contactless chip technologies, and CONNECTHINGS, a pioneer in providing systems that deliver contextualized services and content based on location and time, today announced a partnership to give Near Field Communication (NFC) the intelligence it needs to go beyond payment and transit applications to enable a broad range of mobile services. To accomplish this, the two companies will jointly develop, promote and commercialize the Wave-Me™ NFC services platform, an end-to-end solution carriers and third-party service providers can use to give subscribers easy access to a broad range of consumer services and applications through their mobile phones. "When INSIDE announced its Wave-Me technologies in February of this year, we introduced our vision of a service-rich future for NFC, and the partnership we are announcing today is an important step in realizing that vision," said Loic Hamon, vice president of marketing, NFC, at INSIDE Contactless. "Together with CONNECTHINGS, we are developing the key infrastructure elements that will give operators and service providers a powerful NFC service delivery platform and transform how people interact with and use their mobile devices." The two companies occupy dominant positions within their respective markets, and their combined expertise and experience create a unique force to drive the development of the Wave-Me NFC services platform and define the intelligent interfaces and protocols necessary for communication between NFC handsets, NFC tags and the platform. INSIDE will provide its NFC technology know-how, NFC hardware, loadable application-level software for the handset, Wave-Me products, NFC tags and other patented technology. CONNECTHINGS brings knowledge from its AdTag™ server-side contextualized content management, as well as its experience with NFC tag (News - Alert) and mobile application life cycle management and other technologies. "This partnership with INSIDE Contactless demonstrates our commitment to distributing and commercializing NFC tags to deliver contextualized services to mobile phone users and to managing tags and application life cycle," said Laetitia Gazel-Anthoine, founder and chief executive officer of CONNECTHINGS. "We share INSIDE's vision of consumers using their mobile phones to scan tags to quickly gain access to value added and contextual services, and look forward to working with INSIDE on the creation of this NFC services platform." Wave-Me-enabled handsets will allow people to access relevant, profile-based services with a simple gesture. When "waved" near a corresponding Wave-Me NFC tag, the Wave-Me technology automatically simulates a complex series of keystrokes, eliminating awkward, time-consuming, multi-keystroke chores. Wave-Me tags could also contain relevant phone numbers or complex URLs to send SMS messages or send and retrieve information from web sites. Merchants and other businesses will be able to sponsor Wave-Me applications, with the possibility of displaying branding information not only on the tag, but also on the handset screen with accompanying sound or music. Museums and cities will be able to provide Wave-Me applications to their visitors, with the possibility of using NFC tags deployed in their environment to access services. These tags will provide quick access not only to a multimedia guide but also to added-value features like annotation and content sharing. INSIDE and CONNECTHINGS plan to demonstrate the Wave-Me NFC services platform later this year. About CONNECTHINGS Founded in 2007, CONNECTHINGS provides expertise in barcode technologies, NFC, GPS and location-based technologies, and is a pioneer in providing tags and contextualized location- and time-based content management systems. The company's software solution, AdTag, enables outdoor advertisers, public transport companies, public authorities, museums, event organizers, retailers and brands to create and adapt location- and time-based services, to associate tags and services and to manage tags and application life cycles. CONNECTHINGS customers are brands, international public transport companies and local government authorities that deploy networks of public tags. CONNECTHINGS works with several advertising agencies. CONNECTHINGS has its headquarters in Paris, France. For more information, please visit www.connecthings.com. About INSIDE Contactless INSIDE Contactless is the global leader in open-standard contactless payment and Near Field Communication (NFC) semiconductors and software that power the next generation of payment, transit, identity and access control applications. The company's intelligent, microprocessor-based platforms offer the flexibility to be embedded in smart cards, mobile phones and other consumer electronic devices, documents, badges and other items to support a wide range of innovative contactless applications and bring new levels of convenience to users. INSIDE has delivered more than 300 million contactless platforms worldwide to customers and partners that include many of the leading payment card and mobile phone manufacturers, systems integrators and financial institutions. With a portfolio of 60 families of patents, including several essential NFC patents, the company has played a leading role in NFC and contactless innovation. INSIDE is headquartered in Aix-en-Provence, France, with offices in Shanghai, Singapore, Warsaw, Seoul and Silicon Valley. For more information, please visit www.insidecontactless.com. |
