The Smartcard Surge

Powerful chips and flexible APIs lay the foundation for substantial market growth.

Peter Hofland

By the year 2002, 3.85 billion smartcards will be in use worldwide. That's three times the market volume for 1997. The foundation for this enormous growth is being laid this year by mo re powerful and more flexible cards and better integration with OSes and hardware. At CeBIT, expect to see several new smartcards from Gemplus, Philips Semiconductors, and Schlumberger, as well as a host of readers integrated into desktop and mobile PCs, keyboards, and even disk drives. In short, smartcards are finally becoming an integral part of enterprise-computing architectures.

Although the smartcard industry has matured, interoperability among applications, cards, and readers is still a problem for application developers and card issuers alike. However, the Java Card API, the MULTOS card OS, and the PC/SC and OpenCard specifications are re ceiving wide industry support today. All products launched at the show will therefore comply with one or several of these standards.

For example, Schlumberger's new Activa Cyberflex Core card, which is designed for a new range of Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) (Phase 2+) applications, integrates with the Java Car d API. As a result, a standard Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) card can now execute programs autonomously. This enables any standard GSM phone to run customized applications and also simplifies user interaction.

Schlumberger's Easyflex, another CeBIT product launch, is aimed at payment and general banking applications. Because it combines contact and contactless interfaces, it can also be used as a ticket card in public transportation. Easyflex runs a new specialized OS, known as FASTOS (for Fast and Secure Transportation), which is independent of microprocessor and RF protocols and will eventually integrate with Java.

Gemplus will show its GemXpresso card, the first implementation of the Java Card API on a 32-bit processor (ARM 7 core). The company will also demonstrate GemXpresso running an electronic-purse application that can be dynamically modified and reloaded. In addition, Gemplus will unveil GemXcos, the first 16-KB smartcard product to use standardized SQL queries to access its ISO 7816-7 da tabase. (An ODBC driver is promised in June.) This smartcard is aimed at portable file applications in the health-care, identity, and car-fleet-management industries.

Philips Semiconductors' new SmartXA and FameX 16-bit multitasking card architectures both include a firewall system to protect multiple applications running on one card. The company says that these cards have the power to run applications up to 30 times faster than the 8-bit cards that are still common in most applications today. This in turn allows for the use of high-level application programming interpreters, such as MULTOS, without compromising application performance.

At a Glance:

New smartcards are becoming independent of chips and issuers. Look for systems that run multiple applications on one card, such as Schlumberger's Easyflex.

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Regional Growth of Card Use

Regiona l Growth of Card Use
	1997	1998	1999	2000	2001	2002
Europe	900	1020	1200	1400	1600	1800
Asia/Pacific	270	380	510	680	920	1300
U.S.	10	50	100	180	280	38
Other	20	30	50	100	200	370
Total	1200	1480	1860	2360	3000	3850
Smartcard use by global region in millions, 1997 through 2002. Source: Datamonitor