• by Steve Smith , Staff Writer @popeyesm, August 12, 2013

Apple iPhone rollouts just ain’t what they used to be. After five years of these things it is hard to whip up excitement on annual basis, especially as smartphones themselves have settled into a kind of appliance-like status. We are approaching the point where gushing over a new smartphone feature is decidedly uncool. The normalization of these devices both into everyday lives and around a specific set of expectations ultimately is good, I think, for both media and marketing industries. It gives everyone a larger and more stable target at which to aim.

But it’s hard to keep an old hype machine down. According to AllThingsD, Apple will be rolling out its new phone models at an event on September 10. An iPhone 5S upgrade to the flagship model is a given. And leaked photographs suggest that a cheaper model in the iPhone line is also going to launch. Not only are Apple rollouts not what they used to be, but the legendary cone of silence has sprung many many leaks since the passing of the obsessively secretive Steve Jobs. Apparently we can expect an upgraded IGZO display that will save power and be even more brilliant than the one we are used to, and a 12-megapixel camera will bring the phone into line with many of the more advanced competitive models.

But the strong rumors that have emerged lately about the iPhone are especially intriguing for the e-commerce and mobile marketing fields. Many rumors point to Apple finally including NFC technology in this model. But perhaps just as interesting is the expected inclusion of a fingerprint sensor that will give the phone unrivaled levels of security. According to a new report at Apple Insider, the next iPhone will have a convex home button that will pack a fingerprint sensor.

It is the combination of fingerprint sensor, NFC and the existing Passbook app that becomes exciting. From the very beginning, the iPhone has  defined its role as a device that validates and accelerates features and models that have not quite gained traction. Smartphones, tablets and even touchscreens existed before Apple focused on these segments, but their arrival helps advance and perfect each of these. Despite the fact that NFC has been available in many Android phones for a while, and a host of mobile payment solutions have been in the field, I think Apple still has the capability of supercharging the development of mobile commerce and payments.

In retrospect, the incremental rollout of an integrated mobile payment solution from Apple may seem brilliant. The Passbook model is arguably the most successful execution of a mobile wallet yet, although it is not strictly the payment solution. It got many of us used to the idea that an app could provide incredible convenience when it came to everyday transactions such as using loyalty cards or just showing a boarding pass at the airport. I actually use my Walgreens loyalty card now because the company makes it so easy via its presence in the Passbook. I use boarding passes on my iPhone now and specifically look for the Passbook feature in an airline app.

Arguably, and perhaps unintentionally, Apple has turned around the misguided attempt by many mobile payment providers to lead with the actual payment solution. Making payments with the smartphone was supposed to dazzle us, but any sentient consumer could see quickly that there was no practical advantage to whipping out a smartphone compared to whipping out the credit or debit card that they had been using for years.

Everyone in the industry has been arguing for years now that consumers needed to see more value in a mobile wallet than mere payments. What the Passbook did was show that value and convenience could be entirely separate from the issue of making payments. If Apple can successfully integrate mobile payments into a structure that is now familiar to most of us, they could certainly move the field forward so that mobile payments now actually makes sense to people. Even better, you have scores and scores of major consumer brands already present in the Passbook app that can begin thinking creatively about integrating loyalty cards, couponing, and other real value into payments.

The addition of a fingerprint sensor addresses any real or imagined security worries that consumers may have had with NFC.

We will have to wait another few weeks before we know whether Apple finally joins the mobile payment effort. When the consortium of mobile carriers, ISIS, announced last month that it would be rolling out its NFC mobile payment solution nationwide by the end of the year, it may have tipped Apple’s hand. “Support for iPhone, Windows Phone and BlackBerry 10 is expected to be introduced later this year,” the joint venture said in its announcement. If, in fact, iPhone is now part of the mobile payment movement, then we can expect a tremendous amount of interest and activity in this segment in the last quarter. The Apple brand may have lost a good deal of its polish, but I believe the company still has the ability to validate and accelerate market trends. 

If the rumors prove true, then Apple would be entering a market that continues to thwart stratospheric expectations. Gartner recently lowered its forecasts for worldwide adoption of m-payments considerably, citing sluggish uptake in technologies like NFC and a confusing clutter of startup solutions on the marketplace.