World smart card market worth $6.6 billion by 2015

DALLAS, USA: According to a new market research report, ‘World smart card- advanced technologies, application and global forecast (2008 – 2015)’, published by MarketsandMarkets, the total global smart card market is expected to be worth $6.6 billion by 2015, out of which the telecom sector will account for nearly 53.8 percent of the total revenues. The global market is expected to record a CAGR of 7.3 percent from 2009 to 2014.

Growing mobile penetration, surge in acceptance from various governments and increased security and reliability has spurred the growth of smart card shipments, which reached 5.2 billion in 2009.

Advent of new form factors such as Near Field Communications (NFC) and Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communication, growing government ID projects across the globe and EMV compliance will support the growth of smart cards for next five years, resulting into 8.8 billion smart cards shipment by the end of 2015.

The smart card market revenue is expected to grow from $4,498.9 million in 2009 to reach $6,600 million in 2015 with a CAGR of 7.3 percent from 2010 to 2015. EMEA region holds the maximum share of revenue in consumer electronics market on account of technological competence, high adoption of high end smart cards and growing need of secure transaction and identity and access control.

The Asian region, especially, India and China have emerged as smart card hotspots with continuous development of the cellular markets and the increasing 3G penetration and increased governmental interest across the region.

The smart card technology is a major driving force for the payment transaction market as it allows customers to make secure payments. Thus, it is expected that microprocessor based smart cards will continue to dominate the smart card shipments, as compared to the memory chip based smart cards.

The microprocessor segment has accounted for shipments of 4.5 billion smart cards in 2009, which was 86.5 percent of the overall shipments (5.2 billion) of smart cards. The report provides extensive analysis of the smart card industry, current market trends, industry drivers and challenges for better understanding of the smart card market structure.