Any ID Card enterprise is a bit like surfing. We appear for opportunities, or 'waves', that drive the company forward. Often the sea is a bit calm, and we have to generate our own 'waves'. We also look forward, and this means that we produce and follow a five-year strategy, which we have just completed for this year.
Market Growth
We predict that the ID card printing market will continue to grow strongly over the next few years, with printer volume sales rising, driven by the growing want for security and individual identification. A huge part of the growth is driven by smaller corporations now shopping for ID card printers, exactly where previously they could possibly have used a bureau service, or could not have had any ID at all. Also, global corporations are now working with ID cards across the globe, whether it's in their Shanghai or Tokyo or San Francisco or Mexico City office. We are also seeing growth in government projects - way more on this beneath.
The move to provide smaller, simpler-to-use, models has been a theme of the industry over the last two or three years, and ID card printers are now less complicated to use than the average ink-jet printer.
The Will need for Higher Security
A lot of market attention lately has been on high-profile National ID Card projects or other Government projects like Drivers Licences, Benefit cards and Immigration cards. This is becoming driven by a number of variables:
- Government are realising that quite a few of their existing credentials are not secure.
- The move to E-Passports is laying the groundwork for new ID cards. If a government is going to build a national database and infrastructure for E-Passports, then that can be equally applied to ID cards. A lot of the technology, like the biometrics, the chips in the passport or card, and the visual security, is really similar across passports and ID cards.
What this indicates is of course the use of biometric ID cards, generally applying 2 or far more biometric techniques, and requiring advanced wise cards to shop and secure the data. As the are normally made use of for numerous years, and at times in high usage environments, laminated cards are ordinarily required.
These government projects are also spinning off into the commercial globe, with airports, transport organisations, and others, seeking to adopt the new cards for their own security.
So, the industry is going two techniques:
- Smaller firms wanting basic, beneficial-value ID card badging solutions.
- Government organisations and bigger businesses wanting secure solutions for printing and encoding smart cards.
Of course, there is nonetheless a really huge middle-market place including medium to substantial firms, universities, health & leisure and other applications.
ID Card Printing is not a Commodity - Support is the Distinction
Whether or not it is the small provider just beginning out, or the sizeable organization on their fourth generation of ID Card [http://www.ultramagicard.com/homepage/], printing ID cards is just a component of what our users need to do. They also want to encode wise cards (contactless or get in touch with chip cards), they will need to capture card holders details for security purposes, and they need to have to do this once again and again.
Conclusions
We are seeing growth in smaller providers, also in government projects. Overall, there is continued wholesome growth in just about all ID markets.
Sometimes the waves throw us some challenges, and keeping up with new smart card technologies and standards is definitely one of them, but these challenges are great in order to keep the market active, and to locate new applications for ID cards.