Smart industry shows resilience

 

The smart card industry has stood up to the rigours of 2009’s economic crisis, according to new figures released by Eurosmart.

The smart security association reports that all market segments showed positive volume growth during the year and that further growth in smart secure device shipments is expected in 2010.

In the government and healthcare markets, Eurosmart reports a multiplication of government ID tenders worldwide and continuous ePassport deployment. It also reveals that other ID applications such as driving licenses, healthcare and electronic services to citizens are contributing to the solid growth of this market segment, and says biometry is a vector of innovation in this area.

According to Eurosmart, total shipments for 2009 were 740 million memory and 4520 million microprocessor units. Of these, it reports the government and healthcare markets shipped 170 million memory and 160 million microprocessor units in 2009, making it the third biggest sector for smart card-based technology.

The secure microprocessor contactless sector shipped 265 million units, with the government and healthcare sector being the second biggest market, shipping 75 million of these units.

The association says memory-based smart security devices have largely been overtaken by the more secure and versatile microprocessor-based smart security devices. In the future, it will therefore not detail the corresponding shipments and forecasts. It estimates that in 2010, microprocessor shipments will increase to 4995 million units, with government and healthcare forecast to be shipping 200 million of these units.