2007 Outlook: Small Steps On The Road To Big Breakthroughs

摘要

Anyone expecting 2007 to be the breakout year for the smart card industry is liable to be sorely disappointed. At most, 2007 will show a glimmer of what the future could hold for contactless payment, mega-memory SIM cards and Internet-enabled smart card tokens that plug into PCs. Instead, the coming year will be business as usual for the industry-and that means continuing commoditization, falling prices and only incremental advancements in product portfolios. This is better news for issuers than for vendors. "It looks like (another) tough year next year, and by tough year I mean prices going down," says Derrick Robinson, senior analyst at UK-based IMS Research. "Nobody connected with cards or chips is going to make (much) money at it. They're stuck with this SIM card; that's what they do. That's what brings in the revenue stream."