France-based Gemalto, the largest supplier of NFC SIMs globally, says it is not scaling back its projections for shipments of the cards this year, despite delays in orders by European mobile operators and other factors, such as host-card emulation. 

Gemalto CEO Olivier Piou continued to contend that host-card emulation, or HCE, would not adversely affect Gemalto’s NFC business, and Gemalto also stuck to its projection for double-digit growth in overall sales and profits for the year at constant exchange rates. 

Gemalto’s sales will include boosts from rollouts of EMV cards by Chinese and, later, U.S. banks. And Piou offered a new forecast, that total market for EMV cards shipped to U.S. issuers this year would hit about €100 (US$138.4 million). Gemalto would get a share of that, he said.