News

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

Smart Insights: facts . intelligence . now

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The operators of the buses, local trains and underground services in Paris, France, and the surrounding Île-de-France region — Optile, SNCF Transilien and RATP — have committed, through their governing body the STIF (Syndicat des Transports d'Ile de France), to being able to accept NFC mobile payments for transport tickets by the end of 2010.

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IMS Research, a consultancy headquartered in Wellingborough, UK, just published its latest “Smart Card Annual Review & Market Share Update ». According to John Devlin, the report author, “Overall the smart card market grew 16.7% in 2008 in terms of volumes and all manufacturers saw plenty of upside ». The report also establishes that half of the smart cards in use last year were SIM cards.

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De La Rue Identity Systems has been selected as preferred bidder to design and produce the UK Passport for the Identity and Passport Service (IPS), part of the Home Office.

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The Chinese government is seeking to push its home grown 3G standard overseas and has set a target to take 20% of the overseas 3G subscriber market by 2020. The plans were revealed in a long-term development plan for mobile communication drafted by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).

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Ingenico announced the publication of its “End-to-End Security in an Open and Mobile World” whitepaper along with its first International Security Forum, which took place in Paris on June 4, 2009.

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Eurosmart just published the bi-yearly update of its set of figures: 2008 Smart card shipments and last forecast for 2009. This new issue integrates Eurosmart market knowledge from all of its members, analysis of general economical environment and market trends.

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The French government sovereign investment fund “Fonds Strategique d'Investissement” (FSI) has just invested in Gemalto, and taken 8% of the shareholder’s equity for EUR 160 million.

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The NFC Forum just introduced its target mark, a stylized letter "N" that enables consumers to easily locate embedded NFC tags.

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City of Nice, in South Eastern France announced that, from spring 2010, it will pilot NFC based contactless mobile applications.

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Watchdata boosts China Mobile’s sales channel management by getting it to adopt the SIManagement OTA solution.

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