Broadcom says NFC (near-field communications), the wireless financial transaction technology will be deployed in smartphones in volume next year.
"A lot has been happening around NFC in the last six months, 2012 will be the key year," Craig Ochikubo, v-p and general manager of the wireless personal area networks business at Broadcom told Electronics Weekly.
NFC is a very short-range wirless technoliogy designed to pass small amounts of data. It is used in RFID tags and e-ticketing, but the the big target, which has so far been ellusive, is to get NFC designed into mobile phones.
This would mean the phone could be used to make financial transactions by connectiong wirelessly to point of sale terminals. Effectively replacing chip and PIN cards.
Ochikubo said there is now a top down pressure to make this happen from the banks and mobile phone operators.
"There is broad based interest in NFC from all mobile phone companies," said Ochikubo.
"I expect first products to be in production in the first half of next year," said Ochikubo.
These comments are made as Broadcom announces its first NFC chip designed specificially for the mobile phone market.
"We are sampling now and will be in production in the first half of next year," said Ochikubo.
The NFC controller, the BCM2079x, is a 40nm device, which keeps power consumption low.
Low power is important if NFC is to meet expectations and be adopted in smartphones and other mobile devices as a replacement for retail chip and PIN point of sales transactions.
The chip also makes use of the firm's existing Wi-Fi and Bluetooth technologies to interface directly with the BCM4330 chip to provide direct support for media sharing. NFC will be used to set up high speed wireless data links provided by Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
The controller integrates transaction-based Application ID (AID) routing for simultaneous support of multiple secure elements (both SIM and non-SIM) within a single device.
"Multiple single wire protocol interfaces allow for standards-based SIM and embedded secure element integration," said Ochikubo.
This is the first new NFC device from Broadcom following its acquisition of UK-based NFC and RFID tag specialist Innovision Research & Technology in 2010.