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To: Mark Oliver who wrote (129)	8/10/1999 12:16:00 PM
From: Eric L	Read Replies (6) of 332

Mark << what companies do you see as a possible investment based on this SIM technology? It always hard to get past the big names and private companies to find really good investments. >> You sure hit that nail precisely on the head. Smart Cards in general and SIM cards more specifically, are manufactured either by private companies or small divisions of very large companies and there are persistent rumors that these divisions are for sale. Two companies (Gemplus & Schlumberger) dominate the manufacture of these cards and their combined output accounts for about 80% of the market. Gemplus (FR) is privately held and is a pure smart card play potentially if this $600MM company ever does an IPO which was rumored a few years back when an SI thread was started on them. See: 127.0.0.1:3456/SI/~wsapi/investor/reply-2801217 Schlumberger is a small division of the Oil exploration giant. Other players include Orga (Private), Bull SCT (Private, division of large IT company), De La Rue(division of currency engraver, publicly rumored for sale), G&D division of currency engraver), and so it goes. Not easy to find an investment play amongst the platform providers (who also work the application side to a degree) and I've been looking for awhile. << viability of FRAM as a method of storing information on Smart Cards >> Today's traditional SIM or smart card uses silicon with a combination of an 8-bit microprocessor, ROM, EEPROM, and a small amount of RAM. Memory size refers to the EEPROM so the 32KB card referred to in the China Post article refers to its EEPROM size. Gemplus is starting to use FLASH and has a Java card and prototyping tools available with a 32-bit RISC processor and FLASH (instead of EEPROM: gemplus.com Another sexy new product is being developed by Litronic (using a 32-bit RISC processor but with traditional EEPROM). Silicon is provided by Atmel, and both Litronic and Atmel are potential investment plays that I have done little DD on: litronic.com FRAM? I don't know. Somebody might comment. One potential play I'm starting to focus on is Infineon. "Infineon Technologies was founded on April 1, 1999, as a wholly owned Siemens company comprised of all of Siemens' semiconductor activities. This was in preparation for the planned public offering of a part of Infineon, which was announced in November 1998." Siemens obviously is active in the world of wireless telephony and amongst other activities manufactures handsets for the wireless world. Infineon is ranked ten worldwide in semiconductor sales but is the largest manufacturer of smart card silicon in the world. IPO for Infineon is anticipated in next 6 months. I'm also watching Atmel who recently bought Motorola's smart card silicon operations. I hope I haven't strayed to far from the primary topic of this thread in responding to your questions. - Eric -

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