Khaleej Dailies: Mobily in Saudi Arabia Partners with Gemalto for World’s First Commercial Rollout of Bio-Sourced Subscriber Identification Module

Saturday, February 12, 2011

Mobily in Saudi Arabia Partners with Gemalto for World’s First Commercial Rollout of Bio-Sourced Subscriber Identification Module

Card bodies made from renewable material support operators’ sustainable development plan

AMSTERDAM - Thursday, February 10th 2011 [ME NewsWire]

(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Gemalto (Euronext NL0000400653 GTO), the world leader in digital security, announces that Mobily, the leading mobile operator in Saudi Arabia, has started deploying its bio-sourced SIM, made with renewable material and easily recyclable. Mobily is one of the fastest growing wireless service providers in the world with more than 18 million subscribers. This represents the world’s first commercial deployment of its kind.

The Gemalto product is fully compliant with telecommunications standards and its card body is certified 100% compostable*, two features that make it unique in the market. The innovation answers a major challenge: reducing environmental impact while providing high-standard technical properties.

The new card enables Mobily to convey their visual identity by displaying their branding with colors and graphics of the highest quality level, while keeping their logistics and warehouse processes unchanged. This eco-friendly initiative demonstrates that reducing environmental impact can be a springboard for both innovation and business development in the telecom industry.

“Our goal is to contribute to the ecological friendly community, while enjoying the same usage experience,”Samer Aldameri Vice President Products & Services, Mobily. “We also wanted simplicity and convenience in terms of brand exposure and logistics. Gemalto’s bio-sourced SIM perfectly matches all of our needs.”

“Mobily is always at the forefront of innovation and Gemalto is proud to support them in deploying yet another breakthrough new to the world product,” added Philippe Vallée, Executive Vice President, Gemalto. “Going forward, Gemalto will continue to work closely with Mobily to rollout innovations that help them differentiate themselves in the market.”

*certified by Organic Waste System, an external, independent laboratory

For more information, visit: http://www.gemalto.com/telecom/packaging/index.html

About Gemalto

Gemalto (Euronext NL 0000400653 GTO) is the world leader in digital security with 2009 annual revenues of €1.65 billion, and over 10,000 employees operating out of 75 offices, with research and service centers in 41 countries.

Gemalto is at the heart of our evolving digital society. The freedom to communicate, travel, shop, bank, entertain, and work—anytime, anywhere—has become an integral part of what people want and expect, in ways that are convenient, enjoyable and secure.

Gemalto delivers on the growing demands of billions of people worldwide for mobile connectivity, identity and data protection, credit card safety, health and transportation services, e-government and national security. We do this by supplying to governments, wireless operators, banks and enterprises a wide range of secure personal devices, such as subscriber identification modules (SIM), Universal Integrated Circuit Card (UICC) in mobile phones, smart banking cards, smart card access badges, electronic passports, and USB tokens for online identity protection. Moreover Gemalto delivers on emerging applications related to the ‘Internet of things’ by supplying wireless modules and machine identification modules (MIM) for machine-to-machine communication. To complete these solutions we also provide software, systems and services to help our customers achieve their goals.

As the use of Gemalto’s software and secure devices increases with the number of people interacting in the digital and wireless world, the company is poised to thrive over the coming years.

For more information please visit www.gemalto.com.

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