Smart card market expected to grow wildly, according to company
+ADw-strong+AD4-Munich+ADw-/strong+AD4- (07/22/97) — Siemens Semiconductors has joined the ranks of smart card vendors that have licensed Sun Microsystems Inc.’s Java technology for use in smart cards for electronic commerce, mobile communications, and healthcare sectors.
One of the benefits of using Java on smart cards is that it allows for the running of multiple applications on a single card and also lets users download new applications onto their cards, Siemens officials said.
+ACI-We think this is the right solution to building up multiple-application smart card systems,+ACI- said Ulrich Hamann, vice president and general manager of chip card ICs and Identification System ICs at Siemens Semiconductors, a division of Siemens AG.
Siemens and Sun held a joint press conference here today to announce their plans. They expect the smart card market to grow from 600 million chips on the market now to between 21 billion and 35 billion by 2010, Hamann said.
+ACI-Fifty percent of the market is in Europe now,+ACI- Hamann said. +ACI-I see this changing to 30 percent, while the U.S. will be 25 percent of the market and the rest will be in Asia-Pacific countries within two years. In the next two to three years this market will be driven by Visa and MasterCard.+ACI-
Siemens and Sun started talking about new chips based on Java technology in February after Siemens decided it needed Java know-how to build optimized CPU.
+ACI-The idea here is to accelerate Java execution in smart cards — that is really the mission we see now for ourselves and Siemens, to make a new push in the market of accelerating Java in these smart chips,+ACI- said Peter Harverson, director and general manager of Sun Microelectronics in Europe.
New smart card chips will make smart cards the ultimate thin client, said Scott McNealy, chairman, president and CEO of Sun Microsystems, at today’s news conference.
As ever, McNealy positioned the announcement in terms of its impact on the ongoing Sun-Microsoft Corp. competition, saying that smart cards will be vulnerable weak spot for Microsoft.
Siemens Semiconductors expects to ship 16-bit smart cards that comply to the JavaCard platform in mid-1998. France’s Gemplus SA, which along with Schlumberger SA is part of the Java Card forum, also plans to issue a Java-based smart card.
Gemplus hopes to release a Java-based card in either December of this year or January 1998 a spokesman said. Gemplus will base its card on JavaCard 2.0 specification, which provides developers with a common set of APIs to create smart cards that tie into Internet applications and desktops. SunSoft’s initial specification JavaCard 1.0 has proved more useful as a research tool rather than as a means to build real applications, a Gemplus spokesman said.
Siemens, in Munich, can be reached at 89-234-0 and on the World Wide Web at +ADw-a href+AD0AIg-http://www.siemens.de+ACIAPg-http://www.siemens.de+ADw-/a+AD4-. Gemplus has a Website at: +ADw-a href+AD0AIg-http://www.gemplus.com+ACIAPg-http://www.gemplus.com+ADw-/a+AD4-.
