Gemplus Singapore's R&D team sets industry standard for south east Asia

Singapore, 7 May 2004 - Gemplus International S.A. (Euronext: LU0121706294 - GEM and NASDAQ: GEMP), the world's leading provider of smart card based solutions, today announced that its Card Development Centre (CDC) in Singapore has achieved the industry's high-rating CMM (Capability Maturity Model) Level 2 certification standard. This achievement is Gemplus' second, and shortly following the company's certification of its French CDC in December 2003.

Gemplus is the first organisation of its industry to obtain a CMM level 2 certification, which covers both the smart cards and the OTA platforms (Over the Air). 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.

Gemplus R & D Director for South East Asia, Olivier Jolland, said, "We are honoured with this recognition as it reinforces our international leadership position in the smart card software development arena. The Singapore R&D team have played an instrumental role over the last seven years in defining Gemplus' technology solution roadmaps for the financial and telecommunication industries. Today's certification has further spurred us on to achieve the next level - Level 3 - as swiftly and efficiently as we could.''

The Singapore team is Gemplus' second largest, after France. The R&D resources of Gemplus are focusing on growing smart card functionalities and ease of use as well as developing server based solutions to manage smartcard issuing and life cycle, targeting the main market segments: GSM and 3G, financial services, ID and security.

"To our customers, this clearly demonstrates our smooth knowledge transfers and the tightly integrated processes between our international R&D teams. This translates into an even higher quality of advanced software and solutions that they have come to expect from us, as well as our ability to help them bring products to global markets sooner," said Jolland.

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 2002: Gartner Dataquest, Frost & Sullivan, Datamonitor.) It has the largest R&D team, unrivalled experience, and an outstanding track record of technological innovation.

Gemplus offers an exceptional range of portable, personalized solutions that bring security and convenience to people's lives. These include Mobile Telecommunications, Public Telephony, Banking, Retail, Transport, Identity, WLAN, Pay-TV, e-government, access control, and a wealth of other applications.

Gemplus' revenue in 2003 was 749 million Euros.

www.gemplus.com

For more information, contact:

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

Sangita JEYAPATHY
Edelman
Tel: +65 6733 1110 ext 203
Fax: +65 6733 5550
Email: Sangita.jeyapathy@edelman.com

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