AXALTO ANNOUNCES THE FINAL WINNERS OF THE SIMAGINE CONTEST 2004
15 March 2004 - Schlumberger

Axalto, a Schlumberger company, is proud to announce the three winners of the 2004 SIMagine worldwide developer contest out of the shortlist of ten projects released last week. The Gold, Silver and Bronze awards, which were presented at the Axalto gala dinner on the 3GSM World Congress, went to young and talented teams from China, Poland and Italy. All of them will benefit from a VIP trip to the Olympic Games in Athens and have the opportunity to work with Axalto to take their innovative ideas to market.

Gold award : My Card, by the Beihang University (China)
The Chinese team scooped the first prize of the competition with its innovative My Card application. My Card provides a comprehensive solution for personal information exchange. It sets up an efficient environment to ensure information is quickly and effectively exchanged, stored, organized, updated and easily located when needed. Team members Binsen Tang, Xu Hao and Xin Tang from Beihang University in China left the Axalto gala dinner with a 25,000 euros check.

Silver award : Voice Messaging System, by MobilTek (Poland)
MobilTek was presented with the Silver award, a prize of 15,000 euros for its Voice Messaging System, which enables users to send and receive voice messages as easily as text ones. The applet menu allows user to browse received messages list (inbox), select the one to listen to, delete, forward or answer. The applet can be used together with a dedicated IVR (interactive voice response) system or act as front-end for existing network voice mail system.

Bronze award : Key Tone, by WLAB (Italy)
Key Tone application is an authentication method based on the automatic recognition of a unique sequence of tones played by a mobile phone, such as ring tones for example. The application enables the off-line identification of users/devices, services and products, not only by Bluetooth or IR (Infra Red), but also by simply using tones. The Bronze award is worth 10,000 euros.

The Axalto SIMagine challenge, which aims to discover and promote new ideas for creative and powerful mobile services, offers mobile service specialists, application developers and students from all over the world the valuable resources to take winning ideas through to market.

'We congratulate all ten finalists on their forward-thinking ideas and intuitive insight into operator needs that drive the SIM card industry,' stated Olivier Piou, CEO of Axalto. 'The winners benefit not only from the chance to work with the Java Card technology that Axalto has pioneered for SIM cards, but also the recognition from the leading technology figures that participated in the jury and the support by the leading operators – China Unicom, Orange, Telefonica Moviles, TIM - and partners – Samsung Electronics, Sun Microsystems - that supported our contest.'

Axalto, formerly known as Schlumberger Smart Cards & Terminals, is the world's leading provider of microprocessor cards (Gartner 2003, Frost & Sullivan 2003) - the key to digital networks - and a major supplier of point-of-sale terminals. Its 4300 employees serve customers in more than 100 countries, with worldwide sales reaching 3 billion smart cards to date. The company has more than 20 years' experience in smart card innovation and leads its industry in security technology and open systems.

Axalto continuously creates new generations of products for use in a variety of applications in the telecommunications, finance, retail, transport, entertainment, healthcare, personal identification, information technology and public sector markets. Smart card solutions provide convenience, security and privacy to public and private services operators, their customers and end users.

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