Date: 27/01/2013

SIM card shipments in 2013 to increase by 5% to 5.5 billion units, says ABI

ABI Research estimated the SIM card annual shipments are expected to rise in 2013 by 5% to 5.5 billion units. The related market value will grow at a higher rate to $2.3 billion this year and ASPs are forecast to increase slightly over the next five years, as per ABI.

4G rollouts, NFC, and solutions offering more advanced security for payments, DRM, authentication, and encryption are the enabling factors for the growth in shipment of SIM cards in next few years.

Security & ID practice director, John Devlin, comments, “Following shipment growth in 2012 of 8%, this is the first time that the SIM card market has had two consecutive years of single-digit growth. There is a growing emphasis from leading vendors on new developments to grow their SIM card businesses.” He continued, “The problem is that this is a limited market, highlighting this fact is that, even in 2017, over half of shipments will still be for use on 2G networks.”

ABI finds new form factors and the growing need for data connectivity in consumer electronics and M2M devices will provide some further respite to a slowing market. In 2012, 3FF, 4FF, and MFF accounted for 6% of shipments; by 2017 this will have increased to 33%. Simultaneously, 3G and 4G will have grown from 19% to 42%. The end result of these advances is that high-end SIMs, i.e. 512KB and above, will account for a third of SIMs shipping in 2017, according to ABI.
Author: Srinivasa Reddy N