Market Informations

News from EUROSMART

Smart Card shipments Global 2007

2007 Secure Contactless market overview (excluding access control and ticketing)

EUROSMART estimation is based on Secure Contactless products of the following markets: Financial Services, Government and Healthcare, Transport, but excludes access control or ticketing.

Secure contactless is based on RF technology allowing a short distance read/write operation using radio waves. It is designed to support a wide variety of security features for critical applications.

Mobile phones compatible with NFC technology will also be a driver for further use of secure contactless in the coming years.

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EUROSMART Press releases

Eurosmart forecast 20 billion of Smart Secure Devices by 2020

May 2007 - Latest release of Eurosmart "Vision paper 2020" shows that smart cards will pioneer the way for Smart Secure Devices tomorrow with 20 billion of these are forecasted in 2020.

Smart Card Industry will hit new records in 2007: 4 billion cards in 2007!

April 19, 2007 - In 2007, the activity of the smart card industry should continue its growth at a 16% rate, so much that smart card shipments worldwide will go beyond 4 billion following a volume of about 3.5 billion in 2006.

More than 3 billion cards shipped in 2006 - 3.7 billion forecasted in 2007

November 7, 2006 - In 2006, the activity of the smart card industry has increased by 27% and should continue its growth at a 20% rate in 2007.

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The Japanese market

Market info

Contactless cell phone payment and e-ticketing: Japan leads the way at CARTES & IDentification 2007

The first country in the world where it is possible to withdraw money using the veins in your hand and a biometric Visa credit-debit card [...] is also the country where contactless proximity payment, in particular using cell phones, has taken off most impressively in recent years.

CARTES & IDentification 2007 put Japan as the guest of honour country and were at IC Card in March

Meet us at IC Card, booth #IC2503 (Text in Japanese)

Smart cards in Japan

Information about a fast growing market

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The CARTES & IDentification market sheets

Tomorrow's SIM card

With the new NFC (Near Field Communication) technology embarked in mobile phones, the combination of wireless and contactless will make possible the deployment of new applications.
Our cell phone is becoming a bank card, an electronic purse, a transportation ticket, a company badge, a router for wireless networks, in short a common interface which will continuously exchange with our immediate environment.

Contactless technologies

Top-of-the-range contactless technologies (cards, key-rings, bracelets, inlays and other items containing RF microcontrollers) have attained a maturity that is now speeding up their adoption in two major markets: identity and payment.

Identification

October 2006 was the limit which the American administration (the Department of Homeland Security) set to for the required use by the nationals of the 27 countries of the Visa Waiver Program of a biometric passport including a chip.

Smart cards - paving the way to the digital age

The digital age today raises a number of commonly mentioned questions and challenges. For example, how can you be sure of someone's identity or guarantee a document's originality and integrity? In today's world, telling the difference between the original and a simple copy or imitation, or even guaranteeing someone's identity, is becoming a fundamental requirement that leads to new needs. Such needs arise from the very definition of digital.

Administrative and electronic documents

Healthcare cards, "citizen" cards, driving licences, company cards and obviously national identity cards and electronic passports' this particular field has been subject to an unprecedented increase in projects and programmes over the last two years all around the world (1). The market is still modestly sized, but in value or volume terms, it promises to represent a similar or even greater proportion than the two traditional major markets for smart cards: mobile telephony and banking.

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Mobile telephony and banking

The smart card industry underwent high levels of growth in 2004 in both volume and value terms. For example, the number of microcontroller cards jumped by 50%, with the number of units coming very close to the 1.5 billion mark, and the cumulative turnover of the main card manufacturers increased by some 15%. Gemplus, Axalto and Oberthur Card Systems alone registered a total turnover that broke the two billion euro barrier for the first time.

Reader and payment terminal markets

There is no smart card without a reader, and vice-versa. The trends in the reader and payment terminal markets are naturally closely related to those in the various smart card markets, except for one difference - and a considerable one at that: the 713 million mobile phones sold last year with more than a billion SIM cards (71.4% of microcontroller cards) are not counted in the reader market. This represents one of the card applications that is divided into a few major families: transportation, access control, identity and, for a joint share with payment terminals, small amount transactions. Strictly speaking, the payment terminal market is closely related to the trends in the market for banking smart cards (19% of microcontroller cards).