Japan is so enchanted by the French idea of the embedded microprocessor Smart Card that Japanese companies will soon account for more than one in four of all licensees of the technology worldwide, Agence France Presse reports: We are going to exceed 20 Japanese licensees, Philippe Le Clech, director of international operations for licensing firm Innovatron SA declares: 85 companies have already taken licences to the cards, invented by Roland Moreno in 1974, including Casio Computer Co, Seiko Epson Corp, Mitsubishi Electric Corp, Fujitsu Ltd, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co, Hitachi Ltd, NEC Corp, Toshiba Corp and Sony Corp, and Innovatron looks for the cards to take off in a big way in Japan in 1990-1991 – there are still only 100,000 actually in use in Japan right now – but Nissan Motor Corp and Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp plan to put out some 2m cards.
