As usual with Apple gear, Apple always seems to be somewhat lagging behind when it comes to offering the latest technology, something the Apple fanboy would have you believe is because Apple doesn’t deliver until they have made it better. Maybe so, but it does leave the iOS faithful always in catch-up mode against the likes of Android.

According to the guys over at Cult of Mac, one of the big deals at Mobile World Congress 2012 in Barcelona was announcements concerning Near Field Communication, or NFC, as most know it, and NFC has been around for quite some time with some Android and BlackBerry devices sporting the tech.

As you probably know, NFC is basically your smartphone mobile wallet but hasn’t really made a large indent into the mobile space, and the guys say the reason for the lacklustre uptake of NFC is that a mobile payment solution needs more than just that NFC chip and requires integration and buy-ins from credit card firms, banks and the like and retailers to upgrade their electronic readers to support NFC.

However getting back to the main point of this article, NFC is beginning to take off, recently seen with Google Wallet, Acer use NFC tech in their Acer Liquid Express, Nokia are getting into the NFC game, along with other manufacturers.

Yet Apple remains mum over NFC, there have been previous rumours that the iPhone 5 could possible arrive sporting NFC functionality, and rumours that the Apple iPad 3, which is expected next week might also play along with NFC; however, these are of course unconfirmed rumours and speculation.

So we’d like to ask our readership, although Apple has never once mentioned anything about NFC on its devices, what are the odds of it being featured on the upcoming Apple devices such as the iPhone 5 or iPad 3, or will Apple again be playing the catch-up game with rival devices?