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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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Cards Plus is pleased to support Infineon here in South Africa. If you need any additional information with regards to the Infineon IC's please feel free to give us a call. Samples of their 1k IC Card are available for testing.

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Mifare Cards

Smart Card

Our state of the art Smartcard plant has been vetted and accredited by Philps and Arsenal Research for certification of Mifare products according to ISO/IEC 14443. The Smartcard production plant is ISO 9001 accredited and has a track record of producing work for Ministry of Defence, Transport and National Security departments for governments around the world.

Our Smartcard plant has over 140 highly skilled and trained workers operating a two shift system. This set up enables our manufactuing to accomodate up to 6 million Contact and 3 million Mifare cards each month. With our capacity reducing every month we have major plans to increase the capacity to over 12 million cards per month by the end of 2007.

Contactless Card

Philips MF1 IC S50 - Mifare 1K Card

The ever-popular MiFare 1K card from Philips, also known as Mifare Classic. Operates at 13.56 MHz wireless frequency, according to the ISO 14443A standard, and contains 1Kbytes of read/write memory that can be used for multiple applications. Mifare cards typically operate at a distance of up to 10cm depending on the power provided by the reader. Supplied as blank white PVC cards to ISO standard.

Philips MF1 IC S70 - Mifare 4K Card

The expanded memory Mifare 4K card from Philips, belonging to the Mifare Classic family of products. Operates at 13.56 MHz wireless frequency, according to the ISO 14443A standard, and contains 4Kbytes of read/write memory that can be used for multiple applications. Mifare cards typically operate at a distance of up to 10cm depending on the power provided by the reader. Supplied as blank white PVC cards to ISO standard.

Philips Mifare Ultralight

Mifare Ultralight has a 512-bit EEPROM read/write memory and is compatible with existing Mifare infrastructures. Operating in accordance with ISO 14443A, Mifare Ultralight functions at a distance of up to 10 cm with true anti-collision properties and without the need for a battery.

Mifare Desfire

Mifare Desfire is ideal for service providers wanting to use multi-application smart cards in transport schemes, e-government or identity applications. Based on open global standards for both air interface and cryptographic methods, Mifare Desfire is compliant to all 4 levels of ISO / IEC 14443A and uses optional ISO / IEC 7816-4 commands.

Featuring an on-chip backup management system and the mutual three pass authentication, a Mifare Desfire card can hold up to 28 different applications and 16 files per application.

Please call us to discuss the options.

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