Last updated: 19 March 2014
If you read my introductory post, you’ll be aware that I’m roaming the exhibition halls at GITEX Technology Week in Dubai, with a keen interest on innovation. Of the four exhibition halls, (Telecoms, Government, Cloud, Smart Technology) the Gemalto hub is located in the smart tech sector and we’re keen to take our exhibiting beyond simple show and tell.
Alongside our eGo solutions (Hall 2, booth F2-15) that enable you to unlock your front door by simply touching the handle, or borrow your friend’s mobile phone and make a call from your own account merely by holding it in your hand, there’s lots of revolutionary tech on display.
To scan the media landscape and cherry pick the announcements that have made a splash so far, we’ve seen Samsung exhibit mobility solutions for the healthcare sector: The EMR solution, ‘Dr. Smart’, enables doctors to have access to up-to-date data synchronized with the medical database of their hospitals. And the same applies to mobile solutions for the aviation and sales industries.
Hot on the heels of Samsung, Panasonic is showcasing educational solutions. Suzuki Yuichiro, Senior Manager, System Solutions, Panasonic Marketing Middle East and Africa, revealed today that Panasonic is “looking at deploying high-performance campus networks”. A trend growing in the Middle-East, it capitalizes on e-learning software and new interactive hardware like whiteboards, and ‘short-throw’ projectors.
We’ve got several demo stations running, pictured above, and my colleague, VP Marketing for Mobile Financial Services at Gemalto; Winston Yeo has been speaking in conference on the subject of mobile money. The latest discussion explores the question ‘Will NFC and mobile money be replacing bank cards?’ You can let us know what you think below.
Currently, mobile financial service solutions including mobile wallet and NFC are addressing specific needs depending on the market maturity and environment. In emerging markets, for instance, mobile money solutions aim to help unbanked people get access to financial services, whilst in developed countries; NFC mobile payments are being used, in addition to banking cards, to bring extra convenience to the end user.
It’s interesting to see that these two use cases are now starting to converge. It’s clear that in both emerging and developed countries, mobile money and peer to peer payments bring convenience. The real difference is that in emerging markets, mobile money services enable people to actually start using a bank account.
According to Tarik Ghanim, Business Development Director at Du – the leading mobile operator in UAE: “NFC ecosystem is complex and starts with building the right infrastructure in the region, but there are ways to bypass the lack of infrastructure by building the right user experience; starting with peer to peer payments, mobile money and mobile commerce”
So tell us, how do you feel about mobile innovations where you work? Is the Middle-East ahead or behind the mobile innovation in your country? Is finance the single biggest driver of mobile adoption or are other industries now realising the potential of mobile and the cloud?
