John Gruber over at Daring Fireball said something recently that made a lot of Apple’s more seemingly incredible business decisions make sense to me: Apple wants to cut out the middle men by becoming the only middle man anyone using an iOS device needs to go through.
If you keep that in mind, it makes today’s latest news about Apple’s NFC ambitions make more sense. Reportedly, Apple has told carriers that the iPhone 5 won’t have NFC, as Apple is reportedly “concerned about a lack of a clear [NFC] standard.”
Of course, that doesn’t mean Apple doesn’t want to release a handset with NFC-like capabilities, including the ability to pay at kiosks and cash registers just with a Jedi-like wave of your iPhone. They’re still working on that capability… they just want to set the standard and tie it all into iTunes.
That could make things pretty interesting, especially as Android has its own NFC system. Are we looking at the new credit card wars… this time, not between VISA and MasterCard, but between iOS and Android?
