Infineon Retains Market Leadership for Chip Card ICs Due To Excellent Security Expertise for Ten Consecutive Years

Neubiberg, Germany – September 10, 2007 – Infineon Technologies (FSE/NYSE: IFX) retained its global market leadership in chips for card applications in 2006. In a recent report entitled “Global Smart Card IC Study 2006”, the US market research company Frost & Sullivan confirmed that Infineon achieved market leadership. In 2006, Infineon’s market share was 29.1 percent of the overall chip card IC (integrated circuit) market, totaling about $1.9 billion U.S. dollars according to Frost & Sullivan. This makes Infineon the global market leader for chip card ICs for the tenth consecutive year. The market research company also affirms that Infineon is the market leader in volume shipments of security microcontrollers for chip cards. Infineon shipped 844 million microcontroller units in the 3.06 billion microcontroller market, leading it to exceed the 27.5 percent mark.

”Infineon has played an outstanding role in the smart card field throughout the last decade. Despite hard times in the industry, Infineon has always managed to keep its leadership by addressing a variety of applications with a wide portfolio and a broad customer base and today has an excellent reputation for its security expertise,” said Anoop Ubhey, Global Programme Director, Smart Cards ICT at Frost & Sullivan market research company.

Infineon is strong in chip card growth fields: contactless, ID and payment

Furthermore, Frost & Sullivan asserts that Infineon has a leading position in several of today’s growth markets for the chip card industry, including contact-based and contactless interface, with the trend towards the contactless interface. In the upcoming years, Frost & Sullivan anticipates the market for contactless cards to grow by an average of 34 percent year-on-year. For contactless interfaces, Infineon has expanded its Mifare® portfolio towards microcontrollers and is today the only provider of contactless chips that are compatible with all the contactless standards including Mifare, ISO/IEC14443 B, A, and FeliCa®.

Infineon is the world’s leading supplier of security chips in the payment segment, including credit cards and payment cards. Also, Infineon is strong in high-security applications including identification for electronic passports or personal ID on smartcards.

The top market players in the chip card IC market in 2006

According to market report “Global Smart Card IC Study” (published end of August 2007) of US market research firm Frost & Sullivan, the overall chip card IC market in 2006 totaled about $1.9 Billion U.S. dollars.

The top chip card IC market players in 2006 were:
1. Infineon Technologies (29.1%)
2. Samsung (15.5%)
3. NXP (14.3%)
4. Atmel (13.0%)
5. Renesas (12.5%)
6. STMicroelectronics (6.9%)
7. Others (8.7%)
Source: http://www.presseagentur.com/infineon/detail.php?pr_id=1474&lang=en

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