Gemplus celebrates 15 years of smart card innovations in Singapore

Gemplus Asia drives smart card research and development to meet business needs for secured, portable platforms for identification, transactions and communication

Singapore, November 3, 2004 - Gemplus International S.A. (Euronext: LU0121706294 - GEM and NASDAQ: GEMP), the world's leading provider of smart card solutions, celebrates its 15th anniversary in Singapore this year.

As the Asia Pacific headquarters, Gemplus Technologies Asia in Singapore was the first office to open outside France¹ and now has more than 700 employees, with local investments exceeding S$200 million.

Gemplus first envisioned a market built on helping business and organizations achieve superior value through more innovative use of smart card solutions. Through its unmatched global IT infrastructure, Gemplus has now produced more than 1.8 billion smart cards in Singapore over the past 15 years.

Teo Ming Kian, Chairman of the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB), said, "I congratulate Gemplus Singapore on its 15th anniversary. Gemplus' growth from a small start-up to a global company in Singapore reflects the conducive environment existing here to support the growth of such enterprises. I have no doubt that Gemplus will further leverage on Singapore to grow even more by using Singapore as a launch pad to secure the enormous smart card and security potential in the region."

"Gemplus has made significant inroads in Singapore and Asia over the last 15 years. The Company is recognized as an innovator in the industry and it continues to impress us with its ability to execute and deliver innovative solutions that address real customer needs," said Goh Mui Hong, Group President & CEO of Vertex Group. "Vertex is one of the first investors in Gemplus and we have watched it grow to become a leader in the smart card industry today. We continue to be a strong supporter of Gemplus."

Gemplus' state of the art facilities in Singapore are a key manufacturing hub for memory and microprocessor cards, SIM cards, payment cards and smart card software. The manufacturing facility supplies 80 per cent of the high value micro modules to Gemplus' smart card embedding plants all over the world. This is an average production capacity of 37 million units per month.

The facilities, located at Ayer Rajah Crescent, also include one of Gemplus' main R&D centres, responsible for innovation and customized smart card solutions for mobile telecommunications, finance and security and identity industries. Gemplus has the largest R & D team in the smart card industry with over 600 smart card engineers globally, including more than 100 in Singapore. Within R&D in Singapore, the Card Development Centre (CDC) also recently achieved the industry's high-rating CMM (Capability Maturity Model)² Level 2 certification standard. This achievement is Gemplus' second, and shortly follows the company's certification of its French CDC in December 2003.

"I'm tremendously proud of Gemplus' achievements in Singapore, all made possible by the unceasing innovation, commitment and spirit of our people over these first 15 years," said Chou Fang Soong, South East Asia president for Gemplus Technologies Asia. "Asia is a growing market for us and we see Singapore as a test bed for innovation across the region."

"Gemplus' continued emphasis on innovation and R & D has made it the partner of choice for Asia's key players such as NTT DoCoMo in Japan, SingTel and NETS in Singapore and Hutchison in Hong Kong," added Chou.

In the financial sector, Gemplus in Singapore is the first centre in South East Asia certified to manufacture and personalize EMV smart cards for Visa and MasterCard International. Gemplus' smart chips are already found in millions of CashCards and credit cards in Singapore.

Gemplus continues to be a strong supporter of innovation in Singapore. In 2002, EDBI and GemVentures jointly set up an incubator fund of US$6 million to invest in start ups and young companies with innovative and viable business plan for smart card applications.

1.Gemplus opened its first office in France in 1988.  
2.The CMM, developed at Carnegie Mellon University's Software Engineering Institute (SEI), USA, is considered the industry standard for measuring the maturity of an organization's software development processes.

About Gemplus
Gemplus International S.A. (Euronext: LU0121706294 - GEM and NASDAQ: GEMP) is the world's leading player in the smart card industry in both revenue and total shipments (source: Gartner-Dataquest (2004), Frost & Sullivan, Datamonitor.). It has sold over 4 billion smart cards.

With security at its core, and 2400 patents produced by its innovative R & D team, Gemplus delivers a wide range of portable, personalized solutions in areas including Identity, Mobile Telecommunications, Public Telephony, Banking, Retail, Transport, Healthcare, WLAN, Pay-TV, e-government, and access control.

Gemplus' revenue in 2003 was 749 million Euros.

www.gemplus.com

For more information, contact:

Janet LOH
Gemplus Technologies Asia
Tel: +65 6317 3333
Fax: +65 6873 7971
janet.loh-tk@gemplus.com

Nor BADRON
Edelman
Tel: +65 9385 1707
Fax: +65 6733 5550
nor.badron@edelman.com

©2004 Gemplus. All rights reserved. Gemplus and the Gemplus logo are trademarks and service marks of Gemplus S.A. and are registered in certain countries. All other trademarks and service marks, whether registered or not in specific countries, are the property of their respective owners.

Some of the statements contained in this release constitute forward-looking statements. These statements relate to future events or our future financial performance and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause our or our industry's actual results, levels of activity, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, levels of activities, performance, or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Actual events or results may differ materially. Although we believe that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, we cannot guarantee future results, levels of activity, performance or achievements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those estimated by the forward-looking statements contained in this release include, but are not limited to: trends in wireless communication and mobile commerce markets; our ability to develop new technology, and the effects of competing technologies developed and expected intense competition generally in our main markets; profitability of our expansion strategy; challenges to or loss of our intellectual property rights; our ability to establish and maintain strategic relationships in our major businesses; our ability to develop and take advantage of new software and services; and the effect of future acquisitions and investments on our share price. Moreover, neither we nor any other person assumes responsibility for the accuracy and completeness of such forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements contained in this release speak only as of this release. We are under no duty to update any of the forward-looking statements after this date to conform such statements to actual results or to reflect the occurrence of anticipated results.