Gemplus addresses rapidly growing contactless market with its new range of proximity readers

GemProx readers to engage contactless security markets in identity, payment, mass-transit and physical access control

Luxembourg, 9 June 2005, Gemplus International S.A. Euronext: LU0121706294 - GEM and NASDAQ: GEMP), the world's leading provider of smart card solutions, is reinforcing its contactless access control offer by introducing "GemProx", a contactless reader product range dedicated to rapidly growing markets such as identity, proximity payments, physical access control and mass transit. The speed and convenience of contactless technology mean that fast food restaurants, gas stations, public transport services, banks and many other industries are set to create significant demand for this sort of solution. The GemProx range is specifically designed to provide system integrators with a cost-efficient and easily deployable 13.56 MHz proximity contactless technology.

Having been an innovator and leader in smart contactless technology since the very beginning of its use, with millions of cards issued for applications in loyalty, transportation/mass-transit and physical access, Gemplus possesses unique experience and expertise in this field. With GemProx, Gemplus aims to reproduce in the contactless reader market its global leadership in the contact reader market, where for the third consecutive year it was ranked as the number one smart card reader manufacturer (Frost & Sullivan, 2004).

"Our goal is to make contactless technology as easy to use as the contact one, even to those who do not have any experience in Radio Frequency developments", said Alain Sigaud, Vice President Gemplus Smart Card Reader Solutions. "Gemplus's unrivalled involvement and experience with international standards organizations is well reflected in our GemProx reader offering, which fully complies with the latest contactless industry standards, including PayPass and ICAO specifications".

The GemProx reader range is capable of reading any ISO 14443 type A and/or B contactless cards, and is fully compatible with the FIPS 201¹ standard. In addition it offers a high-level interface for T=CL cards and Mifare™ cards. The complete range includes both modular and customized readers, as well as OEM couplers, chipsets, development kits, and all necessary services. GemProx customers will benefit from shorter time-to-market, reduced R&D costs, high performance, strong security, and full interoperability.

For more information, please refer to the Gemplus site: www.gemplus.com/products/gemprox_readers.

1. FIPS 201 - Federal Information Processing Standard 201 is a new U.S. Government standard released on February 25, 2005 by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

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 5 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 2004 was 865 million Euros.

www.gemplus.com 

For more information

Gemplus
Carl Norell
Tel: +1 215 390 2899
Email: carl.norell@gemplus.com

Edelman PR 
Vanessa Clarke
Tel: +44 (0)20 7344 1349 
Email: vanessa.clarke@gemplus.com

©2005 Gemplus. All rights reserved. Gemplus, the Gemplus logo, and SafesITe 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.