Unsurprisingly this was the direct opposite of a slow news week for the mobile industry and for Gemalto’s Telecom business it was no different. Acting as the unnofficial kick-off for the year, in the past few weeks we’ve announced new products, contracts, partnerships, oh and of course the 
unavoidable Facebook SIM, seen here through one of the thousands of tweets:
- @eWEEKeuropeUK MWC: Gemalto Puts Facebook On SIM Card: A new SIM-based application will allow basic handsets to access Facebook… http://bit.ly/gNXyOB
Our overall news reflects the key themes for mobile the market this year including social networking, mobile NFC for payments, machine to machine communications and more. These were backed by 2 announcements about our work to support the operators’ core business in the fields of roaming and sustainable development.
Social Media for all
In the spirit of taking social channels to all users prior to the show we announced a contract with AIS in Thailand to put Windows Live Messenger on any of their subscribers’ phones. This was followed by Facebook for SIM which, as many people such as ZDNet have been saying, turns “dumbphones” into Smartphones.
NFC – Turning your phone into a payment/travel/loyalty device – and more
Last week we were named as part of Everything Everywhere’s & Barclaycard’s launch of NFC in the UK set for mid-2011 while following a successful trial in Nice we were chosen by French bank, Crédit Agricole for its mobile contactless payment program in the same city. This trend was echoed by the GSMA’s Chief Exec Rob Conway who explained that:
“mobile will become the number-one payment method in the future as near-field communication technology begins to grow, and that operators are keen to get involved in this market”. Source V3
M2M – let the machines do the talking
Conway also discussed Machine to machine communications in his opening keynote. This month our M2M wing, Cinterion made a series of announcements started with a successful demonstration of the European emergency “112” eCall service followed by a partnership in the US with Numerex Corp to help growth in this important market. One of the most interesting areas is patient health monitoring which will be made even easier with the launch of the world’s smallest LGA (Land Grid Array) module for M2M.
Supporting operators’ business
Helping to get operators back into the WiFi game we teamed up with iPass to connect carriers to 270,000 Wi-Fi hotspots globally. This increases data roaming options and eases mobile Internet bottlenecks, which has been much reported recently. Elsewhere, in Saudi Arabia we delivered a new generation of SIM card to Mobily. this time the innovation had nothing to do with the apps but the card itself which was the world’s first bio-sourced model in a commercial deployment.
Well that’s the round-up, still want to know more then leave us a comment or visit the stand, Hall 8 number 8A102.
