Multos to dominate smartcard platform, says analyst

Research group Ovum has said today that the Multos operating system is set to dominate the future of smartcard development.

The operating system, developed by the Maosco consortium is one of two competing technologies, which sits on a smartcard embedded chip. The alternative to this is Javacard, which has been developed by Visa. The retail, software and banking industries are waiting with baited breath to find out which will dominate the market so they can start developing applications and branding strategies for whichever is successful.

Duncan Brown, analyst at Ovum, said Fujitsu, ICL and Amdahl support announced at the beginning of this week has completed Maosco's capability to "shape the smart card world".

Fujitsu, Amdahl and ICL will now start developing skills bases and systems integration in line with the Multos operating system. This will help Multos become the "platform of choice" for organisations wishing to deploy multi-application and secure smart card systems now, according to Brown

In a recent smart card report, Ovum states that Java Card is still too immature and applications developers won't be able to use it before 2001. Multos, therefore, has a three-year headstart.

Java Card developer, Visa, were unavailable to comment on the developments.