Near Field Communications or "NFC" is experiencing a bit of a heyday now that the technology has a few successful pilots under its belt.

Or, as PC World writer Mikael Ricknäs puts it, NFC "may soon see light at the end of the tunnel with increasing adoption for city transit projects." Examples: Last Nokia announced that it will incorporate NFC into some of its Symbian-based smartphones next year, while wireless chipmaker Broadcom (News - Alert) acquired NFC specialist Innovision Research & Technology.

Integrating NFC into smartphones makes more sense than having it in the simpler NFC phones Nokia offers today, Jonathan Collins, principal analyst at ABI Research (News - Alert), was quoted as saying.

NFC is also expected to find its way into public transit ticketing. And the Moscow Metro is working with mobile operator MTS (News - Alert) to offer an NFC ticketing system during the fourth quarter.