ABI Research crowns NXP as top NFC IC vendor

ABI Research has awarded NXP Semiconductors, STMicroelectronics, and Inside Secure as the top vendors of NFC ICs. The results were based on ABI Research's Competitive Assessment where companies are scored in eight criteria under the categories of Implementation and Innovation across both NFC modems/controllers and secure elements.

NXP ranked first overall and topped the Implementation category. It was the most successful vendor in 2012 and scored multiple design wins with a broad cross-section of OEMs and product categories, according to ABI Research. NXP was also one of three equal scoring companies coming in joint second for Innovation because of its work highlighting new use cases for NFC across its broad portfolio.

Inside Secure ranked second for Innovation and third for Implementation because it was the first vendor to announce a major OEM contract (with RIM using a SE from Infineon), its input into new standards, and its efforts to develop NFC in new device categories. It continues to develop new form-factors, features and is working with partners to better embed NFC technology into new devices.

STMicroelectronics found some traction in the eSE space and was the leading SWP SIM card IC vendor. This combined with its growing success in new device wins contributed to it achieving the second highest Implementation score.

ABI also noted that Broadcom topped the Innovation category with its strong feature set, market positioning, breadth of applications, and targeted and innovative approach, which has resulted in recent CLF design wins in smartphones and tablets. Sony has been one of the most active companies in showcasing NFC's capabilities across a range of products and devices because of its knowledge of contactless with FeliCa. As a direct result, Sony has gathered strong partner relationships and technical knowledge. Infineon, on the other hand, achieved third position within the Implementation criteria. The company does not offer a CLF but it has utilized its strengths in security to develop new standards and features to enable the NFC market take off.

Practice director John Devlin commented: "With the NFC market in the early stages of accelerating growth it is important to balance commercial success to date with technical innovation, design features, strategic positioning, and demonstration of new use cases. It is these factors that will have the largest impact on long-term success."

Edward Snowden, a low-level employee of Booz Allen Hamilton who blew the whistle on the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), unexpectedly exposed a powerful and seamless segment of the military-industrial complex – the world of contractors that consumes some 70 percent of this country’s 52-billion-dollar intelligence budget.

Some commentators have pounced on Snowden’s disclosures to denounce the role of private contractors in the world of government and national security, arguing such spheres are best left to public servants. But their criticism misses the point.

It is no longer possible to determine the difference between the two: employees of the NSA – along with agencies like the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) – and the employees of companies such as Booz Allen have integrated to the extent that they slip from one role in industry to another in government, cross-promoting each other and self-dealing in ways that make the fabled revolving door redundant, if not completely disorienting.

Snowden, a systems administrator at the NSA’s Threat Operations Center in Hawaii, had worked for the CIA and Dell before joining Booz Allen. But his rather obscure role pales in comparison to those of oil painting reproduction.

To best understand this tale, one must first turn to R. James Woolsey, a former director of CIA, who appeared before the US House of Representatives in the summer of 2004 to promote the idea of integrating US domestic and foreign spying efforts to track “terrorists”.

One month later, he appeared on MSNBC television, where he spoke of the urgent need to create a new US intelligence czar to help expand the post-9/11 national surveillance apparatus.

On neither occasion did Woolsey mention that he was employed as senior vice president for global strategic security at Booz Allen, a job he held from 2002 to 2008.

“The source of information about vulnerabilities of and potential attacks on the homeland will not be dominated by foreign intelligence, as was the case in the Cold War. The terrorists understood us well, and so they lived and planned where we did not spy (inside the US),” said Woolsey in prepared remarks before the US House Select Committee on Homeland Security on Jun. 24, 2004.

In a prescient suggestion of what Snowden would later reveal, Woolsey went on to discuss expanding surveillance to cover domestic, as well as foreign sources.

“One source will be our vulnerability assessments, based on our own judgments about weak links in our society’s networks that can be exploited by terrorists,” he said. “A second source will be domestic intelligence. How to deal with such information is an extraordinarily difficult issue in our free society.”