Japanese Carriers Form Consortium to Coordinate NFC Standards Adoption

Actress Maki Horikita and actor Ken Watabe at Docomo phone event

Today Docomo (NYSE:DCM) announced the formation of a consortium with other Japanese carriers Softbank (TYO:9433) and KDDI (TYO:9984), in an effort to ‘coordinate the adoption’ of international standards for mobile NFC technology [1].

We’ve been hearing a lot about NFC adoption around the world, particularly this past year. When Google unveiled Google Wallet, it claimed that by 2014, 150 million phones would have NFC. But in order for the technology to serve consumers properly, particularly across borders, there needs to be agreed-upon standards.

Hopefully this new consortium (which will bear the very catchy name of ‘Japan Mobile NFC Consortium’) is a positive step towards better services being offered in Japan.

Of course, Japan has pioneered mobile payments via NFC/FeliCa technology in the past, with systems like Osaifu-Keitai already in use by mobile operators for things like payments on public transit or purchases in stores. Docomo itself has sold 36.6 million handsets with NFC functionality in the first half of the 2011 fiscal year.