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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The World’s Smallest RFID Chip

Hitachi has announced the development of RFID chips the size of sand grains. Smaller than the width of a human hair, these RFID chips measure just 1/20th of a millimeter square. The chips are 64 times smaller than currently available RFID chips, which
are already tiny enough to embed in paper. These new RFID chips have a 128-bit ROM for storing a unique 38 digit number, like their predecessor, the Hitachi mu-chip. Hitachi plans on marketing them within the next two to three years. The main application
is likely to be anti-counterfeit.

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Smart Card System For South Africa????

Here we go again...déjà vu!

The South African government has decided to go ahead with the Smart Card system of identification without coming to any conclusion in its discussion with business, in particular the banks.

Home affairs minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula has announced that weaknesses in the green bar-coded ID system had made it imperative to go ahead as soon as possible.

"Many undesirable elements have had access to them. So we can forget about other applications, and just use the Smart Card," she said. The minister also said the Smart Card ID aimed to provide a secure identity system that would be useful in other government departments, notably for drivers licences or at pension pay points. However, it could also be used to identify customers to their banks.

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Re-Transfer Technology

We are pleased to introduce Re-transfer Card Printing

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Instead, the card-data is printed mirror-inverted onto a PET film and subsequently released from this film and fused onto the card through heat and pressure. The print itself is completely independent of the card surface or the card material. This eliminates the ongoing costs for print head replacement. DIS grants unlimited Print-Head lifetime warranty for EDIsecure® XID Re-Transfer Card Printer as long as EDIsecure® material is used.
It is possible to print on 100% PET (Polyester),PVC, PVH & ABS (injection molded plastic cards) and even on Polycarbonate cards. The usually required thin PVC layer, which allows a thermal transfer print, is no longer necessary. These materials offer far more advantages to the customer as they have a better temperature resistance, lifetime cycle and resistance to physical and chemical impact.
• 100% PET Cardware is a very reliable card material at reasonable costs with good heat resistance and very good mechanical strength. Such material would significant help to avoid headaches regarding to expected card lifetime of 10 years like as National-ID cards. This material is not printable with direct card printers but pretty well with XID Re-Transfer technology.
• With XID Re-Transfer technology the printing on the card automatically is protected by the 0.009 mm thick PET release layer of the re-transfer film against scratching and other environmental hazards. That leads to a much more durable card, highly resistant to physical and environmental impacts. Even backside of card is protected by this PET layer against abrasions if printed e.g. with 2D barcode and OCR lines. This minimizes read errors. Lifetime of card and usability period will definitely increase when using Re-Transfer technology. Manipulating the card will destroy and damage the printed layer and make fraud visible.
• Furthermore a versatile lamination program inline or offline with OVD Overlay, OVD Patch and Clear Patches is available for additional protection, if requested. The lamination will not interfere with the pre-print of the card. Most of sample cards from Digital Identification Solutions are already pre-printed with UV and Microprinting.
The XID Re-Transfer film laminates nicely onto card surface even when edges are not flat or when card surface is uneven. Hence true edge-to-edge printing. Now chip cards or proximity cards can be personalized without any problems.
• Because XID Re-Transfer print results are of best quality costs for pre-print on Cardware can be reduced by printing backgrounds and logos with the printer.

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