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Smart Insights Weekly is a weekly newsletter covering the smart card industry, its businesses, its technologies, and of course, its markets as well as its technology suppliers. Smart Insights covers all the major trends in the industry, it encompasses worldwide business, public and private standardization bodies, industry analysts and also the people belonging to the Smart Card Industry community.

Smart Insights Reports cover the smart card or secure transaction industry. They are industry reports covering a technology, a geographical area or a major issue in the industry. Smart Insights Reports include qualitative and quantitative analysis. They are built on a combination of primary research and secondary research, supported by an intimate knowledge thanks to years of experience in the smart card industry.

Smart Insights publications are brought to you by Thierry Spanjaard who has more than 20 years experience in the industry, in a variety of positions.

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China is on track to surpass 1 billion mobile connections before the end of Q1/2012, fuelled by growth in 3G which will soon account for a quarter of the country’s connections.

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Adoption of EMV as the universal payment standard gained further traction in 2011, with official figures revealing that over 42% of all payment cards and nearly 76% of all terminals in circulation globally are based on EMV technology. EMVCo reports there are in excess of 1.3 billion EMV payment cards in global circulation and more than 20 million EMV based acceptance terminals active worldwide (cf. Smart Insights Weekly #11-26).

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Evolving Systems, a provider of software solutions and services to the wireless, wireline and cable markets, announce that one of its customers, a Tier 1 network in Mexico, has decided to upgrade its existing bespoke SIM card provisioning platform to Evolving Systems’ Dynamic SIM Allocation (DSA) solution. A Tier 1 network is one that can reach every other network on the Internet without purchasing IP transit or paying settlements.

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Visa Inc. and Visa Europe announced that NFC-enabled smartphones from Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics, Research In Motion (RIM) have been certified for use with Visa’s mobile application for payments at the point of sale, Visa payWave. The Samsung Galaxy SII, LG Optimus NET NFC, BlackBerry Bold 9900, BlackBerry Bold 9790, BlackBerry Curve 9360 and BlackBerry Curve 9380 have been added to the list of Visa compliant payment products available for commercial deployment by financial institutions.

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According to a new report by IMS Research, the NFC-enabled phones shipped in 2011 totaled 35 million globally. IMS Research forecasts that significant market events and the enablement of other cellular handsets will drive that number to nearly 80 million by the end of 2012.

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Smartrac signed a contract today with Deutsche Effecten- und Wechsel-Beteiligungsgesellschaft, Jena, Germany, regarding the acquisition of KSW Microtec at an amount of EUR 24 million enterprise value. The acquisition is subject to standard closing conditions.

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Inside Secure has entered into an agreement with Intel to them the company with Inside’s NFC products and technologies.

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Gemalto that ten million Financial Inclusion Network & Operations (FINO) customers in India now enjoy the benefits of micro-banking, using Gemalto smart cards, as part of FINO’s broader branchless banking program. FINO is a business and banking technology platform combined with extensive services delivery channel. It has achieved breakthrough in scale and access to affordable financial services to the unserved and underserved masses, totaling 42 million customers in India. More than half of India’s adults today are still not served or under-served by the finance sector1, creating an immense need for financial services to be made accessible to India’s 1.2 billion population.

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In October 2011, the general inspection of the administration, along with a manager familiar with the matter, has announced the roll out of electronic National Identity Card of France was due to October 2012. According to Marc Le Fur, a member of French National Assembly, the date is to be September 2012. He has written a special report to the Finance Committee of the National Assembly, the "general and territorial administration of the state."

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CorFire, the mobile commerce business of SK C&C USA, and INSIDE Secure have set up an agreement to accelerate the rollout of NFC applications by ensuring that Inside Secure’s portfolio of MicroRead and SecuRead NFC solutions, as well as its Open NFC protocol stack, are interoperable with CorTSM - CorFire’s trusted service manager (TSM) solution.

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