Eurosmart has confirmed that over 6 billion microprocessor based security devices will be shipped this year. The double digit growth in the telecom, banking and government segments is set to continue in 2012 due to some major trends.

In the telecom sector, there is still a strong growths in developing markets like India and Latin America, while M2M is opening new applications and expanding the smart security market to, for instance, the automotive, consumer electronics and healthcare sectors.Furthermore, Eurosmart expects secure NFC devices to be in the range of 80 to 120 million in 2012. The strong growth in this sector will depend on MNOs and banks agressively marketing new NFC services and the integration of NFC in all smartphones. As for the government applications, the strong growth in national eID-Programs (especially in Asia, Africa and Lain America) will still go on. Smart healthcare programs also contribute to the growth, like the current deployment in Germany.

With the growing number of online services, Eurosmart also sees a clear trend of increasing security demands in addition to the established smart card based applications. This includes embedded secure elements and the associated secure remote management solutions for smart metering, eCall, smart grid and cloud computing. [www.eurosmart.com]