In my previous article on some of the potential implications of the iPhone 5S launch, I talked about how one of the things that wasn’t included in the iPhone 5S that I thought would be, was NFC technology (Near Field Communications).

Or at least I thought that Apple left it out…

That was until I came across this GigaOm article and this FastCoLabs article.

But it turns out that while they left out NFC, they didn’t leave out near field communications technology. They have just implemented in a slightly different way – using iBeacons – Apple’s flavor of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) that actually achieves the same basic job as NFC, but in a much more elegant and capable way.

To give you a better idea of what this technology is capable of (in addition to mobile payments), I encourage you to check out the following video about Estimote Smart Beacons:

I truly believe that the kinds of things that will come out of the BLE technology built into the new iPhone 5S in combination with the new fingerprint authentication will represent a quantum leap in the value we extract from our smartphones in much the same way that the AppStore that came along a year after the launch of the original iPhone.

It will be interesting to see what develops around the iPhone 5S (and the Android and Windows 8 devices to respond) over the next twelve months.

Keep innovating!

Image credits: GigaOM

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