Gemplus Ships 500 Millionth SIM Card

Gemplus says that it has passed the 500 million mark in terms of SIM cards deployed in the field. To date, a total of 1.36 billion SIMs have been delivered globally with Gemplus providing more than one in every three SIM cards.

Philippe Vallee, president of the Telecom Business Unit, Gemplus, said, "Reaching this major milestone is evidence that the SIM has become a fundamental component of mobile telephony. There are very few companies who can say that they have delivered 500 million products. By consolidating our relationships with our clients and moving into the applications space, we are ready and looking forward to delivering the next 500 million."

With GSM reaching maturity, Gemplus has broadened its focus to include other telecom standards. For example, Gemplus has played a key role in the first card-based network for CDMA by supplying China Unicom with R-UIMs, and in Japan, supplied USIMs for the first commercial launch of 3G by NTT DoCoMo. In the U.S., Gemplus has introduced the SIM in non-GSM environments such as iDEN with Nextel. They have also been supporting the migration from TDMA to GSM across the board.'"

Posted to the site on 23rd August 2002