Gartner Dataquest Report Affirms Infineon as World's Leading Supplier of Semiconductors for Chip Cards
Munich, Germany June 8, 2001 Gartner Dataquest has named Infineon Technologies (FSE/NYSE: IFX) the leader in worldwide sales revenue for silicon chips used in chip card products, marking the third consecutive year that the company has ranked Infineon as the number one provider of silicon to this fast growing market.
In its recently published report, the market research firm states that Infineon held a 47 percent share of the total 1.9 billion chip card IC market, representing 921 million units shipped.
In terms of revenue, Dataquest assessed Infineons year 2000 shipments of both smart card microcontrollers and memory chips at 34 percent of the total market of approximately 1.2 billion US dollars. In 1999, Dataquest reported Infineon as holding the number one position with an overall revenue market share of 43 percent and, in 1998, revenue market share of 42 percent.
Due to semiconductor supply restrictions within a strong growth market, Infineon and other major suppliers in previous years did cede some market share to new players, said Andrew Phillips, chip card industry analyst within Gartner Dataquest's semiconductor group and author of the report Worldwide Chip Card Market Share, 2000: Card Vendors and Semiconductor Vendors.
Infineon is pleased that its worldwide ICs leadership for chip card applications has been confirmed for the third consecutive year, said Hermann Eul, senior vice president and general manager of Infineons Security and Chip Card ICs business group. We have been at the forefront of security development for many years, and this expertise is a strong contributor to our leadership role. We are committed to maintaining our position in this core competence area.
The chip card market is driven by the trend towards increased security requirements in such aspects of everyday life as mobile communications, banking, health services, electronic commerce and internet communications, and government applications.
Infineon was the first supplier of chip card ICs to pass the strictest security evaluation tests for chip card ICs; achieving the ITSEC E4 high rating for multiple products.
According to Dataquest, Infineon dominated the supply of silicon to the memory chip card market with 60 percent market share in 2000. This is due to strong demand for security memory ICs for use in prepaid phone cards, especially in Asia and South America.
In the year 2000, Infineon was the first manufacturer to offer chip card controllers manufactured with state-of-the-art 0.25-micron process technology, which supported large on-chip EEPROM capacities of 64 kilobytes.
Since entering the chip card arena more than a decade ago, Infineon has sold more than four billion chip card ICs. Today, Infineon offers the industrys broadest portfolio of products for chip card applications, including both security controllers and security memory ICs for cards as well as for terminals to read them. With ICs for both cards and terminals, the company offers complete chip systems for contactless chip card applications, regardless of configuration. The companys controller products also support each of the three popular open systems for smart card applications, including Java for Smart Card, Microsoft Windows for Smart Cards, and Multos from Maosco.
In its recently published report, the market research firm states that Infineon held a 47 percent share of the total 1.9 billion chip card IC market, representing 921 million units shipped.
In terms of revenue, Dataquest assessed Infineons year 2000 shipments of both smart card microcontrollers and memory chips at 34 percent of the total market of approximately 1.2 billion US dollars. In 1999, Dataquest reported Infineon as holding the number one position with an overall revenue market share of 43 percent and, in 1998, revenue market share of 42 percent.
Due to semiconductor supply restrictions within a strong growth market, Infineon and other major suppliers in previous years did cede some market share to new players, said Andrew Phillips, chip card industry analyst within Gartner Dataquest's semiconductor group and author of the report Worldwide Chip Card Market Share, 2000: Card Vendors and Semiconductor Vendors.
Infineon is pleased that its worldwide ICs leadership for chip card applications has been confirmed for the third consecutive year, said Hermann Eul, senior vice president and general manager of Infineons Security and Chip Card ICs business group. We have been at the forefront of security development for many years, and this expertise is a strong contributor to our leadership role. We are committed to maintaining our position in this core competence area.
The chip card market is driven by the trend towards increased security requirements in such aspects of everyday life as mobile communications, banking, health services, electronic commerce and internet communications, and government applications.
Infineon was the first supplier of chip card ICs to pass the strictest security evaluation tests for chip card ICs; achieving the ITSEC E4 high rating for multiple products.
According to Dataquest, Infineon dominated the supply of silicon to the memory chip card market with 60 percent market share in 2000. This is due to strong demand for security memory ICs for use in prepaid phone cards, especially in Asia and South America.
In the year 2000, Infineon was the first manufacturer to offer chip card controllers manufactured with state-of-the-art 0.25-micron process technology, which supported large on-chip EEPROM capacities of 64 kilobytes.
Since entering the chip card arena more than a decade ago, Infineon has sold more than four billion chip card ICs. Today, Infineon offers the industrys broadest portfolio of products for chip card applications, including both security controllers and security memory ICs for cards as well as for terminals to read them. With ICs for both cards and terminals, the company offers complete chip systems for contactless chip card applications, regardless of configuration. The companys controller products also support each of the three popular open systems for smart card applications, including Java for Smart Card, Microsoft Windows for Smart Cards, and Multos from Maosco.
About Infineon
Infineon Technologies AG, Munich, Germany, offers semiconductor and system solutions for applications in the wired and wireless communications markets, for security systems and smartcards, for the automotive and industrial sectors, as well as memory products. With a global presence, Infineon operates in the US from San Jose, CA, in the Asia-Pacific region from Singapore and in Japan from Tokyo. In the fiscal year 2000 (ending September), the company achieved sales of Euro 7.28 billion with about 29,000 employees worldwide. Infineon is listed on the DAX index of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and on the New York Stock Exchange (ticker symbol: IFX). Further information is available at www.infineon.com
Glossary
EEPROM Electrically Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory
IC Integrated Circuit
ITSEC Information Technology Security Evaluation Criteria
Information Number
INFCC200106.082e