According to market researcher Dataquest (San Jose, Calif.), the microprocessor
and memory based smart card market will grow from 544 million units in 1995 to
3.4 billion units by 2001.(Dataquest, 408-468-8206)
General Motors Corp., American Express Co. and other "non-bank" financial
companies have set their sights on the smart-card market. By 2001, they will
carve out a significant share of the expected 10 billion annual transactions
perhaps as much as 50 percent, reported author David Jung of Killen &
Associates. Jung also said smart cards from companies such as AT&T Corp.
would make sense in everyday consumer settings, including vending machines,
parking meters and the purchase of lottery tickets and stamps. The smart card
market will triple to 30 billion transactions by 2005, according to the report,
"Non-Banks Smart Card Strategies: New Opportunities To Increase Sales and
Profits." (Killen & Associates, 415-617-6130)
The report, "Non-Banks Smart Card Strategies: New Opportunities To Increase
Sales and Profits," also finds that telephone companies are ideally positioned
to apply smart cards to capture a significant share of the booming market for
electronic cash and Internet payments. Killen sees these markets growing from a
worldwide total of 250 million transactions in 1996 to 25 billion in 2005.
Because providers will aggressively introduce and market stored-value cards and
smart cards, 30% of these payments will be made by smart cards by 2005,
according to Killen.(Killen & Associates,
415-617-6130)
Smart cards in the North American market totaled 13 million in 1996 according to
Schlumberger Electronic Transactions. That number is expected to grow 84 percent
to 273 million by the year 2001. The projection for 2005 is an estimated 543
million cards in North America and 3.75 billion cards worldwide. This includes
microprocessor and memory chip cards. (Schlumberger, Public
Relations Department, 212-350-9509)
According to the market-research firm Dataquest (San Jose, Calif.), 90 percent
of worldwide integrated-chip-card shipments went to Europe in 1995, while only 2
percent headed to the Americas. By the year 2001, Europe is expected to account
for only 40 percent of these shipments, while Asia will command 25 percent and
the Americas 20 percent. (Dataquest,
408-468-8206)
According to a survey carried out for Bull Worldwide Information Systems, the IT
group, growing numbers of people are in favor of using the latest information
technologies such as the Internet and smart cards to pay bills and receive
government services. Over 80 percent of the 1,000 people aged over 15, from
widely varying backgrounds, who were interviewed for the survey were in favor of
using smart cards to receive or pay for services. Only 40 percent of the sample
considered lack of knowledge about the technology as a barrier to dealing with
government electronically. Some 76 percent did not regard lack of access to a
computer as a significant problem. "This possibly reflects the increasing
availability of information technology in schools, offices and homes," said the
survey. (Bull Worldwide Information Systems, Public Relations
Department, 508-294-6000)
Worldwide smart card chip sales will reach $2.8 billion by 2001, with annual
sales increasing by more than 50% a year, according to Ulrich Harmann, vice
president and general manager of smart card integrated circuits with the Siemens
Semiconductor Group. Harmann expects 1997 card chip sales to total $520 million.
While Europe now accounts for 68% of overall smart card demand, Harmann predicts
that by the end of the decade, Europe will represent only a third of demand with
Asia and the United States also each representing one-third of demand.
(Siemens Semiconductor Group, Public Relations Department,408-777-4500) >
In a recent WWW user survey, respondents ranked censorship (34%), privacy (26%) and
navigation (13%) as their most important concerns. Among women, privacy was the
top concern. Additionally, nearly 40% of the respondents reported that they had
provided false information when registering at a web site. The reasons cited for
this include: use of the information not clearly explained, accessing site not
worth providing information, and distrust of sites. Only one of five users
thought that devices such as cookies should be used. The survey, which was
conducted by the Graphic, Visualization and Usability Center of the Georgia
Institute of Technology, also found that there was strong support for private
communications on the net, anonymous payment systems, and new privacy laws.
(Georgia Tech Office of Technology Licensing, 404-894-6900)
According to Visa International, as much as one-third of their total card base
will be smart cards within the next five years or by 2002. To date, Visa has
issued more than 20 million smart cards globally, though many of those were
disposable Visa Cash cards that consumers would be unlikely to keep once their
value had been depleted. (Visa International, Public Relations
Department, 415-432-8036)
According to a report by International Data Corporation (Framingham, Mass.), the
growth in the number of online buyers and the amount of the average transaction
will drive e-commerce up almost a hundredfold from $2.6 billion in 1996 to more
than $220 billion in 2001. The report indicates that the total number of Web
access devices such as PCs and Internet TVs will grow from 32 million in 1996 to
over 300 million by 2001. In addition, the number of total users will grow to
175 million, with non-U.S. consumers accounting for the majority of that growth.
The U.S. percentage of Netizens is predicted to drop from 65 percent to 54
percent. (International Data Corporation,
508-872-8200)
