Watchdata Joins SIMallianceWatchdata Joins SIMalliance

LONDON -- SIMalliance announces that Watchdata - the N°6 smart card player in the World (Gartner CY07 Chip Card Market Share Survey) and the one of largest domestic supplier of smart cards in China - today reinforced its commitment to common and interoperable SIM, handset and wireless platform architectures by officially joining the association.

The Watchdata membership further establishes SIMalliance's global footprint and confirms the association’s position as the reference organisation for the SIM Industry.

With this extended geographical coverage the SIMalliance, whose role is to advance operability between SIM, handsets and wireless platforms, will be able to better steer its development to meet the practical needs of the mobile market. The alliance’s unequalled knowledge of “global” markets enables members to foresee and facilitate new services and content opportunities arising from the convergence of mobile communications with the Internet and the Media worlds.

Mobile Eco-System Players need to deploy global solutions quickly while responding to the ever increasing needs of their customers for services and content that cater to individual customer demands. As mobile devices undergo rapid transformation from voice communicators to tailor-made personal services and content access devices, the SIM card inside is not only the most flexible and secure universal platform allowing for sophisticated personalisation of services and content, it also permits dynamic OTA management when already in service.

“This new membership shows a real maturity of the Industry and confirms that the SIMalliance is a truly global organisation”, says Michel Canitrot, Chairman of SIMalliance. “Following the path of GSM technology, which has been a success mainly due to its global interoperability, the SIM card is poised to turn into a true revenue generator for operators, handsets and services & content providers, allowing them not only to provide secure identity across networks but foster access to personalized & ubiquitous services and empower new successful business models.”

Watchdata System Co. Ltd.