Report on China's IC card/smart card industry 2009

DUBLIN, IRELAND: Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "China IC Card/Smart Card Industry Report, 2009" report to its offering.

The world's IC card shipment reached 5.085 billion units in 2008, up 18.7 percent year-on-year, and it is expected that it will amount to around 5.3 billion units in 2009. The card volume per capita in developed countries was 3.5 in 2008, while it was only 1.1 in China, so there was still a larger growth space in China's IC card market.

In 2008, China's smart IC card sales revenue amounted to RMB7.335 billion, and the sales reached 1.946 billion units, down 2 percent year-on-year; of which, the number of mobile phone card exceeded 700 million units, and the issue of the second generation of ID card had finished in 2008, 918 million units in total. Impacted by global economy downturn, the export had dropped to around over 400 million units in total.

The mobile phone card is one of the mainstream products in IC market. Although the growth in mobile phone subscribers had slowed down in 2008, it is expected that the mobile phone card will still maintain the better sales in the following years taking the trend of more than one card for a person and 3G market development into consideration.

Renewal of second generation resident ID card
By the end of 2008, it had finished its issuance in accordance with unified plan of Ministry of Public Security, which had negative impact on IC card shipment.

Bank Card EMV Transference China Unipay had implemented bank card EMV transference trials in Bank of China, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Agricultural Bank of China and China Construction Bank in Jun, 2009.

By the end of 2008, China had issued 1.8 billion bank cards in total, and 94 percent of which were magnetic cards. In the meantime, the credit card had increased relatively rapidly, up 57.7 percent year-on-year. With EMV transference expands, it is expected that bank card will greatly promote IC card shipment within the following five years.

Student ID card and all-in-one-card in campus
Currently, the Ministry of Education and local governments of all levels are discussing the issue of unifying student ID card and campus all-in-one-card. Once it achieves the uniformed standard, it will issue hundreds of millions of cards.

Urban transport card
It will develop towards regional all-in-one-card.

Cards for Ministry of Labor and Social Security In Apr, 2009, Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security announced it would implement medical-insurance-card nationwide, and it is expected that medical-insurance IC card will boost up after the year of 2010.

Governmental and Corporate Identity and Access Card Being the important measure to guarantee system security, such card also can deal with share information and information infrastructure. In the meantime, it can be smart card, as well as USB KEY.

IC card develops toward RFID field
After the 7th National IC Card Application Conference in 2004, State Leading Group Office of Golden Card Project Co-ordination had officially listed RFID technology and electronic label applications into key works, started trials in some qualified departments and local governments after over-one-year investigation and discussion, and actively and steadily promoted the construction of RFID application demonstration projects, such as industrial production process and safe production management, promoting agricultural products industrialization, anti-fake and dynamic management for important items, supply chain and modern logistics management, digital tourism industry and modern service sector.

In China, the IC card will be applied for more and more fields in the future, such as mobile phone cards (2G & 3G), bank card, STB and digital broadcast card, PBOC 2.0 multi-purpose fees card, and the annual sales will reach more than 2 billion units.