Smartcards with multiple applications will never catch on, according to Cambridge, Massachusetts-based market analyst Forrester Research Inc. The lack of standards and the prohibitive cost of the cards (which may be as much as $15 each) will inhibit their uptake, the company claims.
Although Forrester predicts that numbers of smartcards will continue to grow and reach 295 million in Europe by 2004, they will be mainly single application cards. The numbers tell only half the story and many of the cards are not being used. Forrester cites the example of the 7.5 million ‘Chipper’ smartcard carriers in Holland who together perform only a million transactions a year.
GSM phones and digital television will provide greater numbers of access points, with Motorola and French television firm Canal Plus among those to build smartcard slots into their hardware to facilitate online buying.
The smartcard may survive, Forrester argues, but with a different function. The growth of the internet has stimulated smaller networks that can store applications more easily than smartcards can. Smartcards must move from carrying the applications themselves towards becoming access keys to let users access those applications across the web.
