NXP and Poken to develop NFC products for social networking

SINGAPORE: Poken SA announced its collaboration with NXP Semiconductors N.V., the leading semiconductor company in NFC and smart card technologies.

At WIMA 2011, Poken will launch the first end-to-end NFC compliant platform for social networking, extending the benefits and productivity enhancements of existing social media tools to the real world. The new platform adds to Poken’s product portfolio by adding NFC-based loyalty, payment, and access control capabilities to an already-successful range of social media products.

At WIMA 2011, the two companies will showcase the first joint prototype of a low-power full-featured NFC product, combining an NXP NFC core and Poken’s ultra low-power 32-bit microprocessor. This demo, shown at the NXP booth, features the Poken web interface displaying the rich social-media profiles of people and objects, collected live by touching tags with an NXP-Poken reader as well as a mobile phone.

Poken’s NFC-based platform will allow users to quickly collect people, places and things - with a simple touch – viewing them in a dynamic timeline so you remember whom you met, or what you collected, where and when. Poken’s platform also allows users to share with friends what they collected, add comments, and spread special deals– all with just a touch, avoiding tedious searching and making sharing extremely easy. Poken also offers an API for easy integration into third-party websites.

With a poken - a USB stick fashion accessory - or an NFC-enabled handset, users can exchange their social business card by touching another such device. They can collect brochures or other physical media by simply touching an NFC-compliant sticker. Poken makes collecting rich, dynamic content enhanced with social media information from over 50 social networks straight forward and intuitive.

“We are very excited about this collaboration with NXP. I believe that this will accelerate the integration of the smart card and NFC worlds within social media, allowing for clever new features. I’m thrilled by this opportunity to power existing NFC/Contactless services with our social capabilities,” said Stéphane Doutriaux, Founder and CEO, Poken. “This will enhance the user experience, and make it fun and cool.”

“Social networking has changed how people communicate with each other for both work and pleasure. Our collaboration with Poken on NFC opens not only a bridge between the virtual and physical worlds, and also enables new application fields such as retail for example through intuitive sharing of offers with your friends,” said Henri Ardevol, vice president and general manager, NXP Semiconductors.