Nokia launches NFC smart poster service

NFC Hub aims to give businesses an easy way to build NFC tag campaigns.

The announcement is a few days old. Sorry we missed it - but it's worth covering.

It's a common belief that NFC needs to bed in with consumers via 'unthreatening' ideas like tags for marketing and launching wi-fi etc before the weightier concept of 'wave and pay' is accepted.

But for all that, the majority of service launches and trials have been in payments.

It looks like Nokia wants to depart from this. The NFC Hub lets businesses buy generic NFC tagged posters, aimed at directing people to websites, Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and other URLs, plus tagged business cards.

Users just tap an NFC-enabled mobile against a poster that contains a small tag. It could make Foursquare check-ins much easier.

Businesses can get started with a poster or sticker for £20.

"A huge engagement opportunity exists out there," said Rupert Englander, Nokia's head of services, sales and marketing in the UK and Ireland.

"This isn't a case of us filling the void while waiting for mobile payments to come through; it's about this will happen and it will keep happening. NFC tags will be everywhere, and used for many different things."

As with 2D barcodes, businesses can track how their campaign is being used and change the URLs that the NFC tags are pointing to in order to tweak a promotion.

Of course, this all relies on NFC tech being widely adopted. At present, Nokia offers two NFC phones, the C7 and the N9, while Samsung built it into the Nexus S. And that's pretty much it.

But you have to start somewhere...

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