Euro-smartcards to top one billion in four years

The smartcard market is one of the fastest growing branches of the semi-conductor industry today and the European market is set to reach one billion by 2004.

A report by the IDC shows 430 million microprocessor smartcards were shipped worldwide in 1999. Of these, a total of 284 million units were shipped in Europe alone - an increase of 44 per cent on the previous year.

Accelerated growth rates for the European market have been fuelled by traditional applications like banking and telecommunications. However, according to Eric Ochs, general manager of IDC France, m-commerce and security applications will trigger dramatic changes over the next few years.

IDC predicts that although Europe currently dominates the smartcard market, by 2005 Europe will represent less than half of the worldwide market. Emerging markets in North America and Asia - with mainland China the most promising single market - are set to have higher growth levels than the rest of the world.

The IDC report focused primarily on four European countries: France; Germany; Italy and the UK for the period of 1998 to 2005, but analysis and forecasts are also provided for the worldwide smartcard market.