Japan's three biggest mobile phone companies said Wednesday they will adopt international standards for touch payment systems, expanding beyond the current implementation by Sony.
NTT DoCoMo, KDDI and Softbank said they will work together in the newly formed "Japan Mobile NFC Consortium" to bring the country in line with oversea trends. The companies currently use the NFC, or near field communication, standard called FeliCa, developed and owned by Sony, but said they will incorporate two other standards that are more common abroad, known as "Type A" and "Type B."
The companies, which collectively have about 124 million contracts in a country with a total population of under 130 million, are eager to squeeze more income out of mobile devices, as price wars cut revenue and massive investments in next-generation networks weigh on their balance sheets.
Encouraged by the government, they are also moving to adopt more international standards after long years of developing Japan-only implementations, a trend that led analysts to dub the country's mobile industry "Galapagos," because technologies evolved cut off from the rest of the world.
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