Carolina Milanesi, an analyst at Gartner, added that "consumers are not jumping up and down to get NFC right now." Many U.S. consumers still write checks, a predecessor to credit cards, she noted. "You wonder how ready consumers are for mobile payments."

"There's no real pressure right now in delivering NFC," Milanesi added. "The ecosystem is far from ready from a payment perspective. This doesn't mean Apple is not interested in NFC. They will do it when they can take advantage of it and deliver a differentiated solution to users."

Matt Hamblen covers mobile and wireless, smartphones and other handhelds, and wireless networking for Computerworld. Follow Matt on Twitter at or subscribe to . His email address is .

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