SIMposium2009 in Vienna: 253 participants despite economic gloom
SIMposium is the only global conference & market place where the mobile services eco-system meets the SIM Industry. In 2007 and in 2008, more than 300 delegates from 40 different countries across Europe, Asia and the Americas and 25+ exhibitors convened to Berlin over the two days. The event gathered an unrivalled number of network operators, service providers, content and application developers as well as the vendor communities to share expertise and information, network with industry peers, learn about latest industry developments and connect with the wider SIM community.
After two successful editions in Berlin and one successful local edition in Hongkong last October, 210 participants from 36 countries attended over the two days in Vienna despite the economic gloom while 43 chose the online option (real-time or post event). Participants represented the whole mobile services ecosystem, of which 25% were operator companies – accounting for 1,4 billion subscribers worldwide. See below for participation breakdown.
Smart Card Card Web Server - the Rising Star
The 35 presentations and 3 panels covered subjects as varied as Convergence, M2M, Mobile Transactions, Application Development, Device Management where the Universal Integrated Circuit Card (UICC) or SIM card is poised to play a pivotal role in providing a seamless user experience as the hub of a new generation of converged services and applications.
The most successful part of the conference was dedicated to the latest SIM innovation: the Smart Card Web Server. This technology leverages the universality of the SIM to deliver an open and standardized development environment, allowing network operators and application providers to create a new generation of powerful mobile applications. The other key benefit of the Smart Card Web Server is to ease the distribution of mobile applications towards consumers, even on “open market” devices that are not customized by network operators
New this year: SIMposium2009 Live!
Uniquely, for a conference of this kind, the conference was broadcasted on the Web in real-time - SIMposium2009 Live! and also featured an online interactive exhibition hall where registered participants could click to chat with exhibitors. SIMposium2009 Live! with 50 unique connected participants had 600 visits on the first day and 350 on the second day with connection times up to one hour. A lot of delegates in Vienna – who were given access to the online event as well - and online participants used the interface to ask questions to speakers during the conference.
As in previous years, SIMalliance chose the SIMposium 2009 event to publish global SIM card shipments: 2008 saw an increase of 29% from the 2.2 billion SIM cards being shipped in 2007 to 2.9 billion shipped in 2008.***
Breakdown of Attendees:
Ecosystem representation:
Operators 25%
Technology Vendors 10%
Smart Card Vendors 16%
Test 6%
Silicon Vendors 5%
Publishing 12%
MVNOs & Service Providers 6%
Handset & Network 2%
Application 6%
Industry Organisations 9%
International representation:
Western Europe: 81%
Eastern Europe: 6%
Americas: 3%
Asia Pacific: 8%
Middle East Africa: 3%
