Secure and humble

An aspect of the change is that no one longer talks about SIM cards. The major secure transactions industrialists are making their offer evolve towards device management, subscriber management, and more. This demonstrates the gap the major industrialists have been able to build with the followers in the SIM card industry. Major industrialists are strong, not only thanks to their technology offer, but thanks to their presence in all aspects of technologies, and their thorough knowledge of the market.

A couple years ago, I used to go around the MWC booths, and ask exhibitors about their NFC plans. In many cases, I just got a blank face, showing many people had never heard of NFC and if they did, they had not realized the array of possibilities that was arising from the technology. Now, NFC is all over the place, everyone talks about it, and most envision a bright future for the technology.

The maturing of the NFC market is great news for our industry. The secure transactions industry is the security expert in the NFC environment. We have been building our security expertise through SIM and banking cards, which is now materializing in NFC. But at the same time, the industry remains humble in front of the Google, Microsoft, Visa, and others of this world.

“We don’t tell MNOs, financial institutions, and others how they should run their business. We are just a humble German company”, said Michael Kuemmerle, Head of Mobile Security for Giesecke & Devrient, probably speaking for the whole secure transactions industry.

Thierry Spanjaard

Chief editor

Smart Insights