Tokyo, Japan–The Java Card Forum (JCF), an industry organization dedicated to promoting and developing interoperable Java Cards™, announced the success of its first ever Java Card Open Day in Japan. This event that gathered together 17 companies, was dedicated to presenting to the Japanese industry current Java Card success stories and the principles of the ground breaking Next Generation Java Card (also known as 3.0) technology.

“We selected Japan as the setting for this year’s Open Day, because this market has gone through tremendous change in every application segment,” explains Christian Goire, President of the Java Card Forum. “The country is synonymous with technical revolution, and Java Card technology has been at the cutting edge of developments in markets such as telecoms, government ID and payments. We were delighted to have had most of the major names from the Japanese operators, financial institutions, system integrators and card manufacturers on board for this event.”

Today, more than 3 billion cards contain this technology, positioning Java Cards as the most deployed smart card technology to date. According to 2006 figures from Frost & Sullivan, Java Card shipments will see solid growth from 0.75 billion units in 2005 to 3.76 billion in 2011, representing a compound annual growth rate of 26%.

“Java Card technology is still mainly to be found in the mobile telecoms sector, where it is used in SIM and USIM cards. But other markets – such as payment, ID and content protection applications – are also now benefiting from the advantages of Java Card technology. The mobile telecom experience has clearly demonstrated that Java Card enables the time to market to be dramatically reduced when launching new smart card based services. The technology operates on a security model that enables multi-applications to co-exist securely on the same card.”

About Java Card technology Java was invented by Sun Microsystems in 1995 and has important features that make it the ideal choice for smart cards:

• Java Card technology security model enables multiple applications to co-exist securely on the same card.
• Java applications can be developed, validated and rapidly tested for interoperability across suppliers’ compliant smart cards.
• Java is a strong global brand, and close specification management by Sun allows scalability and integration across the major IT platforms.

About the JCF The JCF was established to promote and develop Java as the preferred programming language for multi-application smart cards. To maintain, improve and further develop Java Card technology, the JCF is structured to integrate business and technical expertise to assist Sun Microsystems to deliver fit-for-purpose Java Card APIs. Since the JCF was formed, members have worked on six iterations of the Java Card API enhancement specifications and associated test and compatibility kits. The group is currently working on enhancements to the 2.2 Java Card API as well as the Next Generation (3.0) Java Card specifications.

To ensure that the interests of smart card issuers are fully represented in these decisions, the JCF has also established the Strategic Partner Program. Through this, companies that are involved in specifying or issuing smart cards are invited to participate in the requirements the definition process.

JCF members include Gemalto, Giesecke & Devrient, Incard, Infineon Technologies, NXP, Oberthur Card Systems, Renesas, Sagem Orga, Sermepa, STMicroelectronics, Trusted Logic and Visa.