Gemplus Pilots Multi-MegaByte SIM Cards
Luxembourg and 3gsm World Congress, Cannes (ots/PRNewswire)
- Bouygues Telecom is the First Operator to Trial the New Super-Sized SIM From Gemplus, GemXplore Generations, Optimised for Multimedia Services
Gemplus International S.A. (Euronext: LU0121706294 - GEM; NASDAQ: GEMP), the world's leading provider of smart card-based solutions, and Bouygues Telecom, one of the leading French mobile phone operators, are piloting the first deployment of GemXplore Generations Multimedia, the new SIM card family from Gemplus with memory ranging from multi-megabyte to gigabyte capacity.
Since late 2004, the interest in large capacity SIMs has increased, but this is the first pilot with a mobile operator involving multi-MegaByte SIMs. "With over one million subscribers to our i-mode service, we were interested in what the SIM has to offer in terms of a centralised storage for all content and easier portability when changing handset", said Georges Passet, Chief Technology Officer, Bouygues Telecom.
GemXplore Generations Multimedia breaks down the traditional barriers associated with SIM use by removing the limitations of memory size and offering high speed data transfer between the handset and the SIM. This means that all value added services, including multimedia content such as screensavers, ring-tones, photos, MP3, games, video, etc., can now be stored, and remotely updated in the SIM, thus reinforcing its traditional functions of security, flexibility, and portability. In addition, operators can store their branding information and specific content in the SIM and securely update them over the air. The SIM becomes a trusted device from which operators can manage service access and continuity for the end-user, when changing handset.
Renesas Technology was able to bring its expertise in chip packaging, high density Flash and secure microcontrollers to realise the pilot as the first step of a major evolution for the SIM, that will enable the market and services to expand in new directions.
This evolution of the SIM is seen as a logical trend of the telecom industry, also shared by handset manufacturers, such as Mitsubishi Electric, whose handsets are used in the pilot. "As the form factor for the SIM doesn't change, it is easy to deploy and means we can offer huge removable memory storage, which benefits both end-users and operators", said, Dominique Lefèbvre, European sales Director, Mitsubishi Telecom division.
Visit the Gemplus stand (Hall 1, B19) at the 3GSM World Congress 2005 for a demonstration of GemXplore Generations Multimedia or cross the Croisette to visit the Gemplus Demonstration centre.
About Gemplus
Gemplus International S.A. (Euronext: LU0121706294 - GEM; NASDAQ: GEMP) is the world's leading player in the smart card industry in both revenue and total shipments (source: Gartner-Dataquest (2004), Frost & Sullivan, Datamonitor.). It has sold over 5 billion smart cards.
With security at its core, and 2400 patents produced by its innovative R&D team, Gemplus delivers a wide range of portable, personalised solutions in areas including Identity, Mobile Telecommunications, Public Telephony, Banking, Retail, Transport, Healthcare, WLAN, Pay-TV, e-government, and access control.
Gemplus' revenue in 2004 was 865 million Euros.
www.gemplus.com
About Bouygues Telecom
With 7,400 employees and more than 7 million customers, Bouygues Telecom has established itself as the company that democratised the mobile telephony market in France. Bouygues Telecom introduced mobile phone contracts to France in 1996, and continues to design useful, simple, high-quality and affordable products for both individual and business customers. As part of these efforts, the company launched i-mode mobile internet services in November 2002. On 10 January 2005, 1 000 000 Bouygues Telecom customers in France had signed up to i-mode, and were able to access 300 sites offering practical information and exchange e-mails with messaging systems throughout the world. Bouygues Telecom is also one of the world's leading mobile phone operators, with international coverage in more than 140 countries.
i-mode and the i-mode logo are registered trademarks of NTT DoCoMo, Inc. in Japan and other countries.
(c)2005 Gemplus. All rights reserved. Gemplus, the Gemplus logo, are trademarks and service marks of Gemplus S.A. and are registered in certain countries. All other trademarks and service marks, whether registered or not in specific countries, are the property of their respective owners.
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Contact:
Gemplus PR : Jane Strachey, Tel: +33-442-364-661,
e-mail:jane.strachey@gemplus.com. Edelman PR: Helen Baker, Tel:
+44-207-344-1285, e-mail: helen.baker@edelman.com