To be more respected, to attract more attention form investors, our smart card industry lacks a good measurement means. The personal computer industry, the mobile handset industry or the software industry are able to provide analysts with figures on a monthly or quarterly basis giving not only the global market size and major trends, but also market shares for all major players in the market. In our industry, we have figures delivered by Eurosmart, twice a year, measuring past, present, and immediate future markets for secure portable devices. We have figures delivered by the SIMalliance that give more details about the SIM card market, such as memory size, operating system, etc., but we miss figures for other market segments. We also have figures delivered by an analyst (cf. Smart Card Industry section) but they don’t fit with the generally accepted segmentation in the industry and don’t come from a transparent and auditable process, thus do not provide the desired level of accountability for financial analysts and investors.

The smart card industry has yet to make the effort to build up a transparent, reliable process that would ideally give on a quarterly basis a fair evaluation of market shares for each major vendor, as well as a measurement of major market evolutions. Such a process needs a positive involvement from each industrialist, it has to be run by an independent organization, and it must demonstrate its transparence and its reliability. If properly managed, this process can provide analysts with a solid set of data describing our industry, its trends and marketshare evolutions. Such transparency would undeniably be beneficial to the whole industry, thus to every one among us.

Thierry Spanjaard

Chief Editor

Smart Insights