London, 20th May 2009 - SIMalliance, the global association of SIM card manufacturers, announces that the third edition of its SIMposium conference has gathered 253* participants in Vienna and online through SIMposiumLive! despite the economic gloom.
SIMalliance is taking registrations for its regional stop: SIMposium Asia, taking place in Hong Kong on 29th & 30th September 2009, co-located with Mobile Device Management & produced in partnership with Informa Telecoms & Media .
210 participants from 36 countries attended over the two days 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.
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.
The conference** and the exhibition are still open! Please visit: www.simalliance.org/simposiumlive
Smart 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.
Global SIM Card Shipments
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.***
“SIMposium 2009 exceeded our expectations in this period of economic gloom.” said Michel Canitrot, Chairman of the Board - SIMalliance. “This success confirms the event’s position as the only one entirely dedicated to and organised for our industry. Our animated and interesting debates on some of the hottest topics facing the whole ecosystem, shows we are addressing pertinent topics. We were very proud and pleased to host many operators and to involve an even larger ecosystem with the participation from handset manufacturers such as Nokia, transportation companies such as Oyster and RATP and several MVNOs & Service Providers.”
* 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%
** post event access to videos and conference proceedings: 590 Eur excl. VAT
*** SIMalliance Perimeter (90% of SIM cards sold in the world)
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Note to editors:
About SIMalliance: Putting the SIM at the heart of the new mobile eco-system
Over the past five years SIMalliance has become one of the world’s foremost commentators in the mobile business. By operating outside the singular commercial interests of any individual SIM card player, the association has been able to pinpoint the mission critical services on the horizon and help steer their development to meet the practical needs of the mobile market.
With SIMalliance members* now responsible for nine in every ten SIM cards sold worldwide, the collective vision of the association is uniquely placed to shape SIM developments and the impact they will have on the new generation of mobile services. From their standpoint, the challenge couldn’t be clearer for the protagonists in the mobile eco-system.
* SIMalliance members are: Datang, Eastcompeace, Gemalto, Giesecke & Devrient, Incard, Oberthur Card Systems, Prism, Sagem Orga, SanDisk, Watchdata and Wuhan Tianyu
Stephanie de Labriolle
Marketing Consultant
+33 6 85 91 19 94
sdelabriolle[at]free.fr
stephanie.delabriolle[at]simalliance.org
www.simalliance.org