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NXP Semiconductor and Infineon are sharing much of the ePassport market pie
NXP Semiconductor has announced its SmartMX security chip is selected by the Chinese government for its ePassport scheme. The Chinese government to start issuance of ePassports in year 2010, and is planning to replace millions of its all paper-based passports.
The two chip companies in the frontline of this market are NXP and Infineon. Both are European based Semiconductor leaders.
NXP claims, it is currently involved in more than 80 % of all ePassport schemes and shipped about 150 million chips to date. 68 out of 79 countries that have deployed ePassports are using NXP SmartMX chip technology including he US, United Kingdom and Singapore.
The other e-card semiconductor leader Infineon is supplying its chips to India's ePassport scheme. India is also in the process of issuing ePassports to million of its present passport holders.
Just like NXP, Infineon is also ranked high in the security microcontrollers market with its security MCU devices used in electronic passports of USA, Germany, Denmark, Estonia, Hong Kong, Norway, Poland, Sweden and Ivory Coast.
Though there are few more capable semiconductor chips vendors, NXP and Infineon lead the pack in offering better solutions to e-card market. The common thing among these vendors is, they all make smart low power consuming microcontroller chips. The key differentiators are the security, and size features of their devices.