NXP pips Infineon to First position

The assessment consists of full year 2011 and first half 2012 market shares and two vendor matrices, one for secure ICs and the other smart card vendors. Gemalto was the clear winner within the smart card vendor matrix, 8 points ahead of second place. The IC vendor matrix was hotly contested with only 1.3 points separating first and second place. NXP just pipped Infineon to first position, through a better overall implementation score and leading market share. This category also measured global presence/reach, breadth of services offered, influence, and contract delivery. Although NXP ranked first overall it was Infineon that was awarded the highest score for innovation driven by the following individual factors:

• Its Integrity guard security solution which consists of two CPU’s which constantly check each other for irregularities to further reduce risk of compromise.
• Migration to solid flash, as an additional security barrier.
• Very high bitrate contactless solutions, allowing larger memory capacity and faster transaction speeds.

Research Analyst, Phil Sealy comments, “Innovation of products and services, in particular those related to multi-application and e-government are becoming ever more important, giving those vendors that may not have a good global footprint or market share the ability to compete for large scale tenders based on experience. Bundesdruckerei is a good example of a company that has a relatively small market share, but has experienced increased media attention due to its involvement with the German multi-application national ID card.”