France

Europe's first Intel-based smartphone is to begin shipping exclusively to mobile network operator Orange's customers in the UK on 6 June, and in France soon afterwards.

The Orange San Diego, first announced in February at the Mobile World Congress as the Orange Santa Clara, features NFC as standard and runs Android 2.3 Gingerbread. The device includes an Intel Atom Z2460 processor, 1080p HD video recording, a 4.03-inch capacitive display and A-GPS.

The San Diego will be available for £199.99 (US$308) on Orange Pay As You Go or for free to customers who take a two year contract from £15.50 (US$24) a month before 25 July.

The launch of the handset "will be supported by a multi-million pound advertising campaign, featuring the Orange ninja creative which will commence in June," says the operator. "The advertising campaign will feature across TV, outdoor, print and online".

France-based NFC specialist Connecthings has been selected by the cities of Barcelona, Hamburg, Rio de Janeiro and Derry to provide NFC services to local citizens and visitors.

The four cities are all participants in the Living Labs Global Awards, a project involving 21 cities around the world that seeks to uncover innovative solutions to urban issues. Seven hundred companies submitted proposals for this year's awards. Each participating city could only pick one solution and four have chosen NFC proposals by Connecthings:

• Barcelona will deploy NFC contactless services for improving the "digital experience" for citizens and visitors in the city.
• Hamburg, the second largest port in Europe, will use NFC services to encourage the 270,000 cruise passengers who visit each year to spend more time exploring the city.
• Rio de Janeiro will establish a service for disadvantaged local communities, which will work in parallel with "Knowledge Square", a series of urban, technological and social reforms designed to increase digital inclusion.
• Derry will use NFC to improve the experience of living in and visiting the city as well as to promote its cultural heritage to visitors and locals.

Fifty passengers at French regional airport Toulouse-Blagnac will test an application that puts a security pass to access airport facilities on SIM cards in BlackBerry NFC phones.

Mobile operator France Telecom-Orange, along with Research In Motion and airline industry IT and communications services provider SITA plan to hold the trial at the airport this summer.

In an announcement Tuesday, the pilot organizers said 50 frequent flyers would be able to tap their NFC-enabled BlackBerry phones to access an airport parking lot, then enter the departure area through a “premium access zone.” They could tap again to enter a passenger lounge. All the while, they will receive real-time information on their schedule, departure hall and boarding gate.

RIM told NFC Times the BlackBerry models planned for the trial are the Bold 9900 and 9790 and Curve 9360

France-based Oberthur Technologies has won a key contract to serve as trusted service manager for France Telecom-Orange group, but lost a TSM contract with big French bank BNP Paribas, NFC Times has learned.  

The Orange TSM contract is groupwide, but is focused for now on Poland and Spain, where the telco plans to launch NFC service this year. The contract will not involve Orange’s two largest markets of France and the United Kingdom this year, since these Orange operators already have TSM contracts with other providers, Gemalto and Orange Business Services, respectively.

As NFC Times reported last July, Orange issued a request for proposal for the groupwide TSM contract last summer, in which it said it was also targeting Romania as one of its “first potential” markets for NFC rollouts, along with Poland and Spain.

That is in addition to France and the UK, where Orange has already launched small NFC rollouts. TSM contracts in those markets are expected to expire around the end of this year.

Inside Secure is expected to announce as early as Friday that Nokia has selected it as NFC chip supplier for the handset maker’s first NFC-enabled Windows Phone, to be introduced in the third quarter.

The contract is believed to be the first for Inside in addition to its deal to supply NFC chips to Research In Motion for BlackBerry NFC handsets, along with at least one model for the small maker of rugged handsets, Sonim Technologies.

The Nokia deal also helps Inside put a dent in the early dominance of the NFC chip market by NXP Semiconductors, which has announced it has design wins for more than 130 NFC mobile phones and tablets. Most of NXP’s wins are for devices on the Android platform, but Nokia also uses NXP chips in all six Symbian NFC phones and one MeeGo handset it has released so far. Nokia also has announced the yet-to-be released Symbian 808 PureView with a 41-megapixel camera will carry an NFC chip.