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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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Further to the announcement it was making its NFC Stack Open Source (cf. Smart Insights Weekly #10-05), Inside Contactless announced its Open NFC protocol stack is now more widely available, placing the full source code and full API documentation on SourceForge.net for free download. The source code for the core Open NFC version 3.5 software – including Android, Windows Mobile, Linux and Java (JSR-257) editions – and API documentation will be available on SourceForge.net starting May 15, and a web site with more information on Open NFC can be found at www.insidecontactless.com/opennfc. As the only provider of Open NFC software in the industry, this move extends Inside’s software stack as a de facto open solution for NFC enablement on mobile devices.

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NXP and Trusted Logic just announced the release of an open source NFC Android API. This will enable mobile phone users to access contactless applications such as mobile payments, transport and event ticketing as well as data sharing directly from their Android phones.

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Oberthur Technologies, as it is no longer on the stock market, is not compelled to announce its results. However, the company has kept its habit of making global announcements about its results. And now positions itself as #2 in the card industry.

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Sydney will have to wait another two years for a smart card transit system that is already 13-years late and quadruple the expected cost.

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After the recent acquisition of Xiring banking activity (cf. Smart Insights Weekly #10-02), Gemalto announced it has completed the acquisition of Todos from investors led by 6AP, a fund belonging to the Swedish National Pension system. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

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The Citizenship and Migration Board of the Republic of Estonia and Trüb have concluded on 31st March 2010 a contract for the supply of the new generation of e-ID cards for Estonian citizens. The deal includes the complete range of personalization and certification services. In addition, the supply of Biometric Residence Permit (BRP) cards for foreign residents according to the respective directive of the European Union is also subject of the contract.

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Sicap has announced the launch of cash-in, cash-out mobile money services on specially designed ATMs powered by Wincor Nixdorf. The cash transactions are accounted for on the customers mobile account, so no bank account or card is required. For operators, the mobile money ATM offer from Sicap constitutes a secure circuit for a variety of money transfer scenarios.

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Verayo just announced its exclusive rights to US patent number 7,681,103, titled “reliable generation of a device-specific value,” granted to MIT by the US Patent and Trademark Office. This fundamental patent covers, for example, reliable generation of silicon chip-unique values using Physical Unclonable Function (PUF) technology. Such chip-unique values can be used as dynamic, volatile secret keys for cryptographic operations.

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First Data announced an agreement with Tyfone, a provider of mobile contactless payment and secure mobility solutions. The collaboration will provide SideTap micro secure digital (MicroSD) memory cards equipped with Tyfone’s patented technologies that will transform most mobile phones with a memory slot into a mobile contactless payment device (cf. Smart Insights Weekly #10-10).

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Parkeon and Skidata, two system providers in complementary markets of the parking industry, intend to form a strategic alliance. Skidata, the specialist in off-street parking (parking facility management for gated parking areas), and Parkeon, the expert for on-street parking systems, see potential of possible benefits for their respective customers by providing an enhanced service offering.

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