Microsoft confirms NFC in Windows Phones in 2012

Microsoft used this year's AsiaD conference to reveal that NFC will be coming to Windows Phones in 2012, but the company is not looking to compete with Google Wallet.

Instead it will be using the NFC payment technology to link into services that already exist.

This is according to Microsoft's President of Windows Phone, Mr Andy Lees, who took the stage and explained Microsoft's stance on NFC.

"Microsoft is providing technological building blocks so payments can be done on the phone – we aren't competing with other people providing service," he explained. "We'll have a platform approach."

People approach

Lees also commented on Android and Siri, mentioning that he thought Android was "very techie" and that Google hadn't taken the "people approach" with the OS.

This is something he noted Microsoft was trying to do and that was why it had locked down the look of Windows Phone 7.

"We wanted to stop problems with fragmentation, so we've locked a lot of things down. We want partners to add value, but not in a way that's chaotic," he explained.

"As an example, we do hardware acceleration of the browser -- no matter which WP device you choose, it all works in a consistent way. Some things in 2012 will extend that."

As for Siri, Apple's new speech functionality, Lees said that the service wasn't "super-useful".

So, Lees' swipe at Siri isn't as caustic as Andy Rubin's but it does seem that Google and Microsoft aren't going to emulate Apple's Siri functionality any time soon.

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