Over 80 percent of all contactless ticketing credentials deployed in 2012 were of shipments deployed by MiFare solutions. MiFare’s share is forecasted to reduce to 69 percent in 2018 owing to new standards coming to market, including CiPurse and a fast increasing “others” category. ABI Research still expects it to remain as the number one solution of choice.
Shipments of memory-based smart cards are falling, having already decreased by 4 percent between 2012 and 2013.Overall shipment growth is forecast to maintain double-digit YoY growth rates over the next five years.
“The demise of the memory card market is expected, although it’s happening a little sooner than initially predicted. Transport authorities are pressing hard to adopt higher-end applications and migrate to next generation credentials offering improved security and a platform to enable multi-application functionality.”
The market continues to evolve at a fast pace and further fragmentation is expected as government’s worldwide look at implementing national standards in a bid to guarantee interoperability, enabling cross-authority travel with single credentials. ITSO in the UK and VDV in Germany are just two examples, with China also mandating migration to a new localized standard. Local standards may use a well-known technology as its backbone, but it is likely that the solutions will be certified under local names.
Research analyst Phil Sealy comments, “The demise of the memory card market is expected, although it’s happening a little sooner than initially predicted. Transport authorities are pressing hard to adopt higher-end applications and migrate to next generation credentials offering improved security and a platform to enable multi-application functionality.”
