NFC Forum establishes partnerships with three industry associations: APSCA, ARTS, and the Open Mobile Alliance

WAKEFIELD, USA: The NFC Forum, a non-profit industry association that advances the use of Near Field Communication (NFC) technology, announced today that it has signed agreements to work collaboratively with organizations representing three different industries: the Asia Pacific Smart Card Association (APSCA), the Association for Retail Technology Standards (ARTS), a division of the National Retail Federation (NRF), and the Open Mobile Alliance.

"It is gratifying to formalize partnerships with organizations representing these important global sectors," said NFC Forum chairman Koichi Tagawa. "The interest in collaboration from this range of industries -- retailing, smart cards, and mobile services -- demonstrates how widely the value of NFC technology is recognized, and it points to the far-reaching benefits consumers can expect from broad adoption of NFC. We look forward to working together with our new partners and to the synergies our joint efforts will deliver." (Statements from the three organizations are available upon request.)

Each agreement executed by the NFC Forum is tailored to the interests of the participating organizations and their members:
* APSCA is a non-profit, independent association that provides information, consultancy, guidance, and networking to organizations in the smart card industry in the Asia Pacific region. The NFC Forum's Memorandum of Understanding with APSCA will allow the two entities to capitalize on mutual interests by sharing information and coordinating non-technical activities such as training courses, case studies, white papers, research, webcasts, and events.

* ARTS is a retailer-driven international membership organization dedicated to developing best practices, technology standards and educational programs through collaboration and partnerships exclusively for retail. Collaboration under the NFC Forum-ARTS Memorandum of Understanding will focus on information exchange and education, including publishing joint papers that would highlight specific case examples and implementation issues for retailing, sharing statistics and research, and educating and communicating with retailers through the well-respected NRF communication channels.

* The Open Mobile Alliance is the leading industry forum for developing market driven, interoperable standards for mobile service enablers. The Co-Operation Agreement with the NFC Forum asserts the two groups' common objectives to establish and promote global standards in the wireless telecommunications and Internet domain. It further institutes a context for joint work on NFC-enabled devices and related applications, including, but not limited to, diagnosing problems and monitoring device performance over the air.