NFC Times Exclusive – Falling SIM card prices among other challenges have forced such major smart card and NFC vendors as Giesecke & Devrient and Oberthur Technologies to restructure, though strong growth in shipments of EMV cards to Asia and the United States helped them record growth in overall revenue in 2014.

The vendors, like their larger rival, Gemalto, which reports its first quarter financial results Thursday, continue to try to expand their software and services businesses to reduce their dependence on sales of smart cards, which are prone to commoditization. That effort has been made more difficult, in part, by trends in the NFC market, which are not being kind to the smart card vendors’ TSM businesses. 

Germany-based Giesecke & Devrient and France-based Oberthur, both privately held companies, do not release much information about their finances to the public, though G&D discloses more than Oberthur.