The elephant in the room for NFC is the handset: You need to start from the position of why people buy handsets. As much as we talk about browsing or apps or whatever there are two main reasons why someone chooses what it does. The second is price. Generally what tariff it is on. The first is what it looks like. Indeed Motorola claims that 80% of the handset purchase decision is based on “what it looks like”. Having a feature, like wifi, GPS, NFC or even Bluetooth and a camera takes a back seat to what it looks like.

The best demonstration of this is the Christmas of 2005. It was the first year that 3G was big for Christmas. As much as the operators pushed video calling, browsing, improved voice quality or whatever, what sold phones was painting them pink. You could have a low-feature 2G phone, but if it looked good and was pink it sold.

Until it’s established no-one is going to buy a phone for NFC. They will buy the phone they want, and if it has NFC then all well and good.

What has changed in the NFC world, and which makes it all look very exciting at the moment is a couple of rumours.

The big one is that Apple has an NFC iPhone. Of course this is all shrouded in the usual Apple mysticism of hope, hype and hearsay but the iPhone is important not in the tiny volumes it sells, Apple has sold fewer phones ever than Nokia sells in a month, but because the iPhone is a trend setter. There was touch before the iPhone but it became the thing to have after.

The second most fashionable thing you can have is Android. Just as unannounced and rumoured as the next iPhone the Sagem Nettribe is believed to be an Android phone with NFC. And just as people won’t buy an iPhone for the NFC but will buy an iPhone with one, the Nettribe is rumoured to have all kinds of lifestyle goodies too.

That’s two, high end, exciting phones with NFC. They go a long way to helping the reason that people buy phones.

There is still the second reason: price. And that’s been a problem. At WIMA in Monaco recently Michiel Van Eldik, New Business and Innovation Director from Telefonica complained that it cost $5 to add NFC to a phone and that the marketing departments and handset buyers wouldn’t countenance that. This isn’t just a Telefonica issue. All handset buyers, in all networks want to see a justification for why they should pay for any feature without a bottom line benefit.

Didier Durand, Director of Contactless & Partnerships, Orange explained that the solution is in the ecosystem. Orange has fantastically ambitious plans for NFC. There will be a launch in Nice in a couple of months and nationally in France for 2011. The funding comes from local government and transport companies which are keen to work with Orange to empower an NFC project. It’s that funding which counters the objections of the handset buyers and which allows handsets to be sold at or below the price of one without NFC.

With new handsets and the ecosystem paying for them. NFC can move from Near Future Cellphones to those of today.