NFC debunked in its own showcase?

Well that’s another Mobile World Congress done and dusted – my 15^th. God I am a glutton for punishment. It was striking this year, however, that it was a bit like some of the early Barcelona events in 2004/5 when the thing was dominated by Nokia and Sony (in partnership with Ericsson back then) were offering cool new handsets. There was a distinctly ‘old skool’ feel to proceedings here in 2013.

The problem (well one of the many) at this year’s MWC was that Apple and Google weren’t there. OK, so Apple never is, but Google used to have a stand so big it had a slide on it. This time out no big stand and, perhaps more tellingly, not Eric Schmidt giving the keynote.

On its own this wasn’t such a downer – Android probably no longer needs to really blow its horn loudly in the mobile world to get noticed. But taken all together, these omissions marked out the show as pretty second rate for me.

It also left the way clear for Nokia and Sony to hog the limelight. Where once these two companies were cutting edge behemoths that had the show in the palm of their hand, these days they are very much the also rans of the mobile world. OK, so they got a lot of press coverage, but they don’t really bring anything new to the party. Worse, they give a twisted view of the industry to the outside world.

Aside from this, there was one interesting phenomenon at the show: payments. Mobile payments was everywhere. Visa and MasterCard became the doyens of the show – trying to fill Apple and Google’s golden slippers – with their announcements and pronouncements on mobile payments. Visa is very much in the NFC camp and is hoping, I think, to force that on us all whether we want it or not by sheer pressure. That and getting it installed in Samsung’s next gen handsets.

MasterCard is taking a more delicate approach, extending its PayPass mobile wallet to be more secure and more useful.

All good stuff, but is it a threat to telemedia? It is interesting that these two giants of the financial services industry now appear to be really driving mobile payments. Operators at the show seemed to just lap it up, finally grateful for some leadership on this. But could these bank products for mobile see things like Payforit take a tumble?

The general consensus at the show was ‘Payforwhat?” Of those that had heard of direct operator billing, most foresee a bright future in microbilling and beyond (see our lead story). It will be years before NFC-enabled mobile wallets will be ubiquitous. For now direct operator billing has the chance to make a killing.