Frost & Sullivan Affirms Infineon Technologies Leadership in Global Smart Card IC Market

In 2003, apart from battling through a difficult market, Infineon maintained its lead in the market. Infineon led the total smart card IC market with a 47.3 per cent share in terms of units and 37.1 per cent in terms of revenues generated in 2003. Considering product types also, Infineon was the leader in both the memory and microcontroller markets, accounting for 66.5 per cent in the memory market and 30.0 per cent in the microcontroller market in terms of unit shipments. It created a significant distance from its competitors, pulling ahead of its nearest rival in terms of global unit shipments by 34.2 per cent. The company also achieved the distinction of being the market share leader in all key segments of the global smart card IC market across all principal geographic regions including the Americas, EMEA and Asia Pacific in 2003. GSM is the flagship area for Infineon and its ascendancy in this market is growing each year. Infineon sustained market dominance in the GSM market with 30.3 per cent unit shipment market share in 2003. Since 2002, the company has enjoyed a leading position in the high-end market of 64 Kbytes microprocessor ICs. The microcontroller IC market, and in particular the GSM IC market, has been critical to Infineons success with about 64.0 percent of its microcontroller IC business derived from mobile telephony. The company has set itself the goal of burning into its chips protective mechanisms that represent the best-possible, state-of-the-art technological developments, thus protecting the data stored in its chip cards and security ICs as effectively as possible against manipulation. Infineon security smart card controllers contain more than 50 individual security mechanisms, which are integrated into the chips and are designed to protect against manipulation and illegitimate use. In partnership with Sony Corporation, Infineon has developed a secure IC for contactless chip cards, targeting multiple application areas in banking, government, private sector and public transport systems. By exhibiting market share leadership through the implementation of a superior market leadership strategy and for its excellence in identifying and responding to market dynamics, Infineon Technologies is a worthy three time recipient of the Frost & Sullivan Market Engineering Leadership Award.