Vendor association Eurosmart has confirmed its estimate of 250 million secure elements shipped in 2013, up from 150 million units in 2012, and reported strong growth for contactless EMV cards; but it's not clear whether the group will stick with its projection made last November of 435 million secure elements for this year.
That projection was made before it was fully confirmed that Samsung Electronics would not put an embedded chip in most of its flagship Galaxy S5 models. As NFC Times has reported, only a few markets, such as Australia and phones shipped to U.S. mobile operator Sprint, will get Samsung's new flagship with an embedded chip. Samsung had been the leading promoter of embedded secure elements, which represented around two-thirds of the market for secure element shipments the past two years. Nearly all of the others were NFC SIM cards.
Smart card vendors are also facing a challenge from the advent of host-card emulation, though Eurosmart said in a release this week that the growing market for secure elements is “expected to continue in 2014.”
