NFC has been picked out by analysts at ABI Research as one of four feature set big winners in smartphones this year, along with accelerometers, vision-based gesture recognition and gyroscopes.

"NFC has been one of the most talked about mobile technologies that has not quite taken off," the researchers say. "The technology has primarily been focused around mobile payments; however, mobile OEMs have begun to see other potential capabilities for the technology such as photo-sharing and location information tag points that could open a huge market for advertising and marketing campaigns."