Ad hominem is also not a valid argument against NFC. One of my friends built a whole automatic mahjong table with NFC tags. NFC apps are used in access control for offices, college dorms, apartment complexes. Businesses have obvious use cases for it, from inventory management to payments. Governments want to use NFC for government functions and visitor prearrival processing. Sure, maybe some of them want you to install apps for other reasons, but I can assure you not all of them do, so it's a shame that this function is so exclusive.

I think western users using NFC for payment, transit, gym access, etc. are not aware how apathetic the rest of the world would be if phones start taking out NFC, and one of the ultimate causes is that it's so difficult to work with across all users. It's just so much easier to make a website that shows a QR code that your PoS system or gym access gate can scan. Bottom of the barrel Android phones in India and China already ditched it and that's just going to exacerbate the issue. If it goes the way of the 3.5mm and microSD card in the next decade, we can put this in its autopsy report.