London, 6th January 2009, SIMalliance announces that Wuhan Tianyu - one of the three biggest developers of smart card Systems in China and an authorized manufacturer and seller of National Commercial Encryption Products - today reinforced its commitment to common and interoperable SIM, handset and wireless platform architectures by officially joining the association.
The Tianyu membership further establishes SIMalliance's footprint in Asia Pacific and confirms the association’s position as the global reference organisation for the SIM Industry.
Asia Pacific is a booming market with a growth of 50% in the number of SIM cards shipped in 2007 over 2006. Mobile broadband is becoming a reality with 3G and HSPDA deployments. Advanced mobile services such as mobile NFC and Mobile TV are being launched. The SIM card foster access to these new services and sustain the mobile operator brand and will in a second phase via its Smart Card Web Server, a SIM-based rich media application development environment, accelerate this trend making the most of the handset browser to deploy rich content and applications with no need to customize the handset.
With this extended footprint the SIMalliance once again will be able to better steer the development of the Industry to meet the practical needs of the mobile market and accelerate the growth in mobile services & content by reducing the fragmentation of technologies through the advancement of operability between SIM, handset & wireless platforms.
“This new membership confirms again that the SIMalliance is a truly global organisation and the reference organisation for the Industry”, says Michel Canitrot, Chairman of SIMalliance. “Following the path of GSM technology, which has been a success mainly due to its global interoperability, the SIM card is poised to turn into a true revenue generator for operators, handsets and services & content providers, allowing them not only to provide secure identity across networks & devices but foster access to personalized & ubiquitous services and empower new successful business models”.
Commenting on joining the alliance, Dr. Xiang Wen, of Wuhan Tianyu said: “As a significant information company which devoted in researching of smart card field in years, Wuhan Tianyu feels a great honour to join in SIMalliance. We are willing to comply with industry criterion, insist on innovation, and improve our craftwork to spread Tianyu products over worldwide regions”.
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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: Eastcompeace, Gemalto, Giesecke & Devrient, Incard, Oberthur Card Systems, Prism, Sagem Orga, SanDisk, Watchdata and Wuhan Tianyu
Stephanie de
PR, Marketing & Web Consultant
SIMalliance
+33 6 85 91 19 94
stephanie.delabriolle[at]simalliance.org
About Wuhan Tianyu
Wuhan Tianyu Information Industry Co., Ltd. (Tianyu) is a professional smart card manufacturer, and also an advanced solution and service provider. Tianyu has the world’s leading R&D and manufacturing capability in the smart card application fields, such as mobile telecommunication, finance, identity authentication, information security, etc. By technology innovation and application exploration, as well as effective integration of related business like smart card products, terminals and application system, Tianyu has got leading and unique advantages in comprehensive service, and will provide more comprehensive smart card application solutions to customers around the world.
Contact Sharon Zhu at zhb[at]whty.com.cn