I have just read the news about Anssi Vanjoki saying that all Nokia handsets from 2011 will have support for NFC. I assume he is talking about S40 and S^4 (not to mention that I am bit skeptical about the announcement given the precedents) but... is NFC support somehow included within the MeeGo roadmap?

Greetings.

If NFC hardware has decently open specs, or a vendor is aggressive enough, drivers should appear for the kernel and go upstream. That in itself is critical for MeeGo support.

Forgot to add, you may want to ask at meego.com

The connectivity team at MeeGo Devices (Nokia) was recently looking for an NFC guy, so I think Vanjoki also includes Nokia's MeeGo powered handsets in "all smartphones". Whether they push all the needed stuff (including relevant UI parts and other enablers to upstream MeeGo and not just drivers) is anyone's guess. I think that's the goal, but as far as I know they can differentiate by adding features not included in the Linux Foundation MeeGo.

my understanding of the NFC thing is that there is now a standard agreed on, where the SIM card provides the data, while the phone provides the antenna and other hardware. So basically, the SIM becomes a kind of credit/debit card.