Google anticipating NFC to take off this year?

For those not familiar with NFC it basically stands for Near Field Communication and what this means in the mobile community is the ability to use your phone as a form of payment device, such as the ability to pay for drinks at Starbucks or buy your groceries just by waving your phone over a device. One could also exchange information with each other through the use of NFC as well and even the ability to unlock doors!

NXP Semiconductors is a company whom many of you may not have heard of but who are responsible for working with Google to ensure that Android 2.3 came with support for NFC technology. Their CEO Rick Clemmer (pictured above) was quoted as saying “Every time we talk to our friends at Google, they tell us to double the numbers for the Android expectations. If the low end happens, maybe it doesn’t get to be greater than 40 or 45 million units this year. If, in fact, Google’s right and we should double everything, then the numbers are closer to a hundred. We’ll clearly have a better feel as we get towards the middle of the year.”

Does this mean we will get to see an onslaught of NFC enabled phones some time later this year?

Stefan at IntoMobile doesn’t seem to think so with only two NFC devices out in the market today – the Blackberry 9900 and the Nexus S. As Android hardware vendors are highly reliant on Qualcomm for chips, he says that unless Qualcomm starts bundling NFC with Snapdragon, seeing NFC on Android devices is most likely not going to take off any time soon.