A recent reported has stated that China issued over 300 million integrated circuit (IC) cards annually over the past three years, accounting for over 14% of the world total.

In 2003, China Telecom and China Unicom purchased a total of 260 million cards for cell phones, including a huge quantity of IC cards with large capacity for GSM and CDMA networks, it said. The telecommunication sector is the largest consumer of IC cards, while the number of IC cards for public telephones issued has also grown rapidly year by year.

Industry sources predict that IC cards will be applied more extensively in identification cards, automated teller machines, banking services and digital radio and TV systems in the future.