Twinlinx Partners with Mobile Distillery to Bring NFC to Mass Market

Mobile Distillery, the leading specialist of mobile application production tools and testing services, today announced that its technology has been integral in the development of a prototype solution that has the potential to turn Bluetooth-enabled handsets into fully featured NFC devices. As the lead of project, Twinlinx, a developer of dedicated hardware for Near Field Communication mobile phones, selected Mobile Distillery for its technology leadership in helping the industry develop successful mobile applications. Until now, the lack of NFC handsets has prevented these services becoming a worldwide phenomenon. This new solution removes this barrier, allowing any Bluetooth capable handset (approximately 60% of current devices) to also use NFC. The first prototypes at ‘CARTES + IDentifications’ tradeshow, France 4-6 November – Twinlinx booth # 4M 111.

Using the existing ability of virtually any mobile handset to run software written in Java ME, Mobile Distillery has worked with Twinlinx to create a Java ME layer which can access Twinlinx’s unique Bluetooth NFC module named My-Max. This module – which takes the form of a small sticker that fits on the back of the handset – combines a Bluetooth receiver and NFC transmitter, as well as a chip which adds a layer of encryption, making sure any data sent using the module is totally secure. Taking advantage of Celsius‘s platform, Mobile Distillery’s Industry-leading automated porting suite, developers of NFC applications can ensure automatic porting of their applications across all compatible NFC mobile handsets* from one Java ME source code. With today’s announcement, those NFC applications will also be automatically ported to enabling Bluetooth handsets. Celsius’ automatic backfilling also means that those applications will be automatically compatible with all new NFC and Bluetooth handsets as they come to market.

“Today’s announcement should be an incredible boost to all of the companies involved in creating and deploying NFC services. While NFC devices are slowly coming onto the market, there’s a demand for handsets right now. By using the native Bluetooth capabilities of today’s phones, the biggest barrier to NFC really taking off is about to be removed,” said Vincent Berge, co-founder and General Manager of Mobile Distillery.

*Among the +1000 devices included in the Celsius database.

www.mobile-distillery.com

A specialist in mobile technologies, Mobile Distillery provides software solutions and services to solve the platform and handset fragmentation issue that developers face when developing Mobile content & services.

Mobile Distillery has offices in Paris, Marseilles and Montreal.

www.twinlinx.com

Twinlinx develops technological platform for an easy integration and development of NFC applications on the existing and future mobile phones. Twinlinx aims to be highly instrumental in NFC market expansion and in enabling development of NFC applications.