Government ID Market to Rebound to 526 Million Units in 2014 after Contracting in 2013

ABI Research has forecast that 435 million smart cards will ship into the government & healthcare citizen ID market in 2013, a reduction of 6 million when compared to 2012. The drop in shipments has been directly affected by two primary reasons:

• The market continues to suffer from the on-going effect of project delays with 2013 looking to be no different. Projects in the pipeline which were scheduled for 2013 deployments look certain to be pushed back to 2014, before significant volumes are realized. Delayed/slow to progress projects include the planned smart national ID card deployments in Russia, Brazil, Poland, and France.
• Large scale projects such as the national ID card in Indonesia and Germany’s smart healthcare card will reach completion this year. The lion’s share of deployments in these two projects were completed in 2012 with significantly less business forecast for 2013. As a result YoY forecasts for worldwide healthcare and national ID cards are down by 5 million and 24 million respectively when compared to 2012 results.

The market’s susceptibility to project delays was demonstrated in 2013. It is no coincidence that the majority of delayed projects have been in the deployment of ambitious multi-application national ID cards. The complexity of multi-application cannot be underestimated and a factor for consideration when anticipating a projects time to market.

Even so, ABI Research believes the market shows positive signs in terms of the project/business pipeline, specifically within the deployment of healthcare, national ID and driver’s license cards with strong growth expected to reignite the market. Additionally, new and next generation card adoption is supporting higher-end interfaces, presenting a higher value proposition.

Research analyst Phil Sealy comments, “France, Brazil, Russia, and Poland all have dual interface national ID card deployments in the pipeline. On top of this, Europe is beginning to move to a standardized driver’s license with optional secure IC integration; an option France has already committed to and rumours that the Medicare program in the U.S. will adopt smart technology remain. ABI Research believes that the latter could have a significant domino effect on smart card adoption. Private healthcare providers in the U.S. could follow Medicare’s example and the option of smart card integration into European driver’s licenses provides additional significant future opportunities.”

These findings are part of ABI Research’s Government & Healthcare Citizen ID Technologies Research Service.

ABI Research provides in-depth analysis and quantitative forecasting of trends in global connectivity and other emerging technologies. From offices in North America, Europe and Asia, ABI Research’s worldwide team of experts advises thousands of decision makers through 70+ research and advisory services. Est. 1990. For more information visit www.abiresearch.com, or call +1.516.624.2500.