More electronic passport deployments, the move to EMV and the ever-popular SIM are still responsible for the vast majority of smart card shipments across the globe.

Smart card shipments totaled 8 billion units in 2013, with government ID, SIM, and payment and banking applications accounting for 87% of all shipments, according to ABI Research.

Of these three market verticals, Gemalto, Oberthur Technologies, G&D and Morpho led the way with a combined 2013 market share of 66%. It is expected that these three applications will spurn market growth and account for 89% of all smart card shipments in 2019.

The expectations and drivers for each of the three vertical markets are as follows:

• Government ID: Shipment volumes are expected to increase more than two-fold between 2013 and 2019. Opportunities in the continued migration to e-passports will be boosted by the introduction of the Supplemental Access Control specification alongside migration to second-generation credentials by those countries that wish to use contactless functionality alongside existing contact applications.
• Payment & Banking: EMV and smart card adoption is forecast to increase from 1.67 billion units in 2013 to 3.33 billion in 2019. As of the third quarter 2014, the year has been prosperous with the U.S. starting wide-scale EMV card issuance, alongside China, ramping up its People’s Bank of China migration. Moving forward other growth countries including Indonesia and India will add additional volumes.
• SIM: The biggest question mark resides in the SIM card market. SIM card shipments decreased in 2013, down to 4.9 billion units from a previous 5.1 billion. A difficult 2013 has raised questions around the ability for the SIM market to bounce back.

But inclusion of SIMs into other devices bodes well for the SIM. “We are already seeing greater SIM penetration into other connected consumer electronic devices, driving a new wave of growth,” says Phil Sealy, senior analyst at ABI. “Additionally, embedded SIMs could trigger greater adoption into M2M applications and likely reduce the cost barriers for inclusion into consumer devices. The message is not to write off the SIM card market just yet, as new opportunities are on the horizon.”

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