The rumors about iPhone 5 will never stop until it releases. This time it rumored that Apple’s iPhone 5 may be all metal and may be able to process mobile payments.
According to a previously reliable source inside Foxconn, Apple’s next iPhone revamp will ditch the glass back and adopt a metal one instead–added to the stainless steel antenna-frame of the iPhone 4, this means the iPhone 5 would be an all-metal affair. Apple was hotly tipped to include Near Field Communication payment technology on both the iPad 2 and iPhone 5 and Apple are and will continue to develop their own payment solution. Near field communication devices can scan and receive information such as encrypted credit cards from about four inches away. While one purpose is to facilitate payments, another could be to send smartphone users advertisements as they pass signs or stores.
“One issue is consumer behavior, and that can be fairly easily overcome,” said consumer-devices analyst Avi Greengart of Current Analysis. “I think the bigger issue is that it’s not on the majority of phones, and the payment acceptance method is not available at most merchants. It’s a classic chicken-and-egg problem — until you get more merchants you are not going to get manufacturers to increase their costs by including this hardware option, and until you have a significant installed user base of consumer NFC devices, merchants won’t be willing to invest in the payment-processing devices.”
“Apple sells tens of millions of iPhones,” Greengart said. “That could give [NFC] a jump-start and installed base. On the other hand, Nokia sells hundreds of millions of phones. They’ve been experimenting with NFC as long as I can remember and have yet to deploy it broadly.”
Apple now is building NFC login powers to its next OS upgrade, OSX Lion.
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