See <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5871332" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5871332</a> for a rebuttal.
I really don't see why I need to bump phones (or come within a few cms) to share data, when I can share data with someone 6000 miles away using the internet/wireless. BTW, does anyone know what the bit rate of NFC is? Also, how about sharing data with MULTIPLE people at the same time? Does one need to bump phones with all of them? With wireless you can simply multicast to all of them and save a lot of time and battery.<p>As for non-sharing applications, like tagsfordroid or similar, why not use wireless technology? Instead of tapping your phone against a table or something, just press a button on your phone. If WiFi is too energy-inefficient, then maybe something like ZigBee is a better solution. Maybe the ZigBee radio can be started on-demand when the user wants to use it. Wireless has a non-zero radio range as compared to NFC which makes it much more useful.
What? I don't know <i>how</i> NFC works but I do know that I don't generally walk around with WiFi enabled on my phone so some WiFi based thing is not going to work for me. And while it seems the adverts for devices with NFC tend to show some sort of file sharing going on, there are other uses that don't involve an actual file share, just a need for authentication (building access, transit, making a payment). Sure a packet of data is a packet of data, but I don't think of it as "sharing" data with the door lock when I badge it.
I pay for my coffee every day with NFC. The big 4 banking cartel here doesn't want an Apple or Google getting a foothold in the market and hurting their profits which is why NFC is a joke on mobile but on cards it does fine.