Apple’s fourth generation iPhone sports a slew of new features but will not have built-in NFC capability.

The company’s chief executive, Steve Jobs, revealed the latest version of the best-selling mobile handset during a keynote speech at Apple‘s Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco today, but did not announce that near field communication will be built in to the device.

Apple is widely expected to add NFC technology to its iPhone soon, and is rumoured to have been testing prototype units, but it now looks like native NFC capability will not arrive until at least June 2011, in the device’s next annual refresh.

Recently published patent applications reveal that Apple sees NFC as playing an important part in its future business, including roles in everything from concert and airline ticketing and file transfer and data synchronisation to, importantly, a mobile payments, mobile commerce and mobile payments business proposition that is set to see the company turn into a service provider sitting at the centre of the emerging multi-billion dollar world of mobile commerce.

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