Identive Group announced two new near field communication (NFC) solution development kits (SDKs) that allow faster creation and implementation of new NFC applications. The NFC Plug & Play Starter Kit enables NFC developers to create and test new NFC applications quickly using a variety of NFC chips. The NFC-NDEF Tag Editor Kit, accelerates tag personalization, demonstration and testing to enable a wider exploration of use cases for NFC technology.

"Our two new NFC SDK's provide application developers with easy-to-use tools to help leverage and promote the growing interest in NFC technology across a wide array of markets. These development tools augment our comprehensive line of NFC offerings that include a variety of logoed and customizable NFC tags, high-performance NFC readers and modules and our Tagtrail NFC tag content management platform," said David Holmes, vice president Mobility & NFC Solutions for Identive, "We see the market for NFC-enabled Machine to Machine (M2M) applications growing alongside, but independent of the mobile phone-based NFC market, and focused on applications such as electronic gaming, music sharing, and Bluetooth and WiFi pairing."

Ayman S. Ashour, chairman and CEO of Identive added, "In our fourth quarter we shipped, as planned, record numbers of NFC transponders to fulfill previously announced orders for Machine to Machine and other consumer applications, totaling just under 15 million pieces. We have since received follow-on orders for eight million additional transponders for M2M applications to be delivered during the current quarter. Within the overall positive momentum of the NFC market we are seeing strong interest in the use of NFC for M2M applications and use cases that promote the Internet of Things, where objects are assigned their own cyber presence and connectivity features. NFC is an ideal technology to help bring about the vision of a world where physical and virtual objects are linked through the exploitation of automatic and easy-to-apply data capture. Identive is helping the market to develop and implement new NFC M2M solutions."

Identive's NFC Plug & Play Starter Kit and NFC-NDEF Tag Editor Kit will both be available in February.