News below the Corporate Carpet in Jan 2005

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Hi Touchpoint Visitors,

Year 2005 started with Tsunami disaster and left us all baffled with series of cause and effects. All is over and streamlined and we are back to SQUARE.

Last but not least are the tsunami waves are observed on the NASDAQ and SENSEX charts for last few days Happy Investing and in case u wanted to know what "ORACLE of OMAHA (Warren Buffett)" is thinking about present market scene than visit Coattail Investor.

Few important things happen which you might have missed to notice are detailed below.

1. WINCOR WORLD 2005:

“Vision at Work” is the motto of Wincor World 2005, which is being held from January 25 - 27, 2005, at Welle Messezentrum in Paderborn, Germany.

Together with 60 partners and across an exhibition space of 7,500 square meters, Wincor Nixdorf will be presenting future-oriented products and solutions as well as consulting and other services for retail companies and financial institutions.

In addition to the exhibition itself, visitors can attend a series of workshops and presentations providing expert know-how for day-to-day business, and a symposium dealing with the future of banking and retailing. Integrated in the extensive program of presentations is also an innovation day on the future of branch sales, which is being held on January 27 in conjunction with the Börsenzeitung newspaper and the Fraunhofer Institute.

• Banking: optimal processes at branches

• Store Vision: focus on integration at retail companies
  

• Services: oriented to outsourcing for financial institutions and retailers

Visit for further details.

2. Biggest Move in Smart Card Industry:

The two largest smart card vendors worldwide, Gemplus International and Axalto, have agreed to cross license each other’s patents on their smart card and related technology. The agreement gives the vendors “broad rights” to the other’s intellectual property, according to a brief statement today by Gemplus.

Business Value of Agreement:
Axalto owns the intellectual property rights to one such method for revving up download speeds to the SIM, which applies the USB protocol to smart cards. The vendor has pushed hard to make this part of the international SIM card platform standards, but Gemplus, among other vendors, have blocked the move. Gemplus doesn’t want to pay royalties to its rival on each USB-enabled card it ships. With the agreement, this does not mean USB will become the new high-speed SIM standard—there are also some technical, not just economic, obstacles to overcome. But the agreement could serve to build the market for this and other proprietary products the two vendors produce.

Market Dynamics:

Each vendor owns thousands of patents, although the Gemplus announcement does not state whether the agreement covers all of them and whether royalties will be eliminated or even reduced.

Standardised Market place Consolidation:
The agreement is nonexclusive, perhaps leaving the door open for other smart card vendors to strike deals. If they don’t, it could leave them at a competitive disadvantage. It might be preferable for other vendors to exchange patent rights, but if it doesn’t happen, neither the industry nor the smaller vendors will suffer much.

Analysis :
"If big players are comfortable about such move than slowly, Smart Card Industry will see vendors agreeing and adopting standards and creating bigger supply side in market. As supply will grow, existing demand will be satisfied to create lower cost of Smart card. This may result in targetting bigger consumer markets like China,Malaysia, HK, Phillipines which are higher on learning curve for Smart card usage and under developed market like India, Sri Lanka, Phillipines will adopt such new standards." Pepole like us need to wait and watch on moves by other vendors.

3. Japan World's 1st Country to issue Contactless Driving License by 2006:

The license will replace a plain plastic card carried by about 80 million Japanese, which is also used as a de facto ID card in Japan. The card is frequently counterfeited, which is one of the main reasons the National Police Agency has ordered all local prefectures to begin rolling out cards within five years. The licenses will also make it easier for officers to fill out traffic citations and make sure those citations are file properly.

Chip Standard Used:
Innovation in RF Antenna enabled to issue contactless smart card. The cards will carry a contactless chip and antenna that comply with the “type B” option of the main international standard governing contactless chips, ISO 14443. This would make the driver’s licenses interoperable with readers rolled out to accept Japan’s contactless national ID card. The national ID or residency card is voluntary few citizens have requested it. That won’t be a problem for the driver’s license, which is mandatory for licensed driver’s to carry. Local prefectures together issue about 20 million licenses per year.

Stored Values and Acceptability:
The 8-kilobyte chip will carry the same information as printed on the front of the card, along with a digital photo of the cardholder and a digital certificate. This certificate and associated private key stored on the chip will be used to verify the authenticity of the data. Police officers will carry portable readers to view the contents of the chip.

But since driver’s licenses are also used by banks, hotels, video stores and other establishments to check ID, project organizers expect these establishments to install readers, too. There is even talk of Japanese car makers, such as Toyota Motor Corp., eventually equipping some models with readers that could automatically adjust seats and mirrors to the cardholder’s preferences.

Social Security Limits Card Useage:
Because of privacy concerns, the government has made it clear the cards will not store the cardholder’s driving record or any other data except what is needed to establish his or her permission to drive. This is also one reason the card will not run multiple applications. It is one of the reason to use 8K - Low capacity chip but fortunate part may be the case of making it compatiable to EMV standards for covering large no. of outlets.