In order to promote its Multos operation system for smartcards, Hitachi has announced that it will form a joint venture with MasterCard in San Francisco in early 2006 with mass production outsourced to local contract makers. Hitachi will invest 300 million yen for an 18% stake while MasterCard will own a 20% share. By transferring the licensing of the operation system from MasterCard's subsidiary to the joint venture, Hitachi expects to make it a smartcard standard. In addition, Hitachi plans to work with Japanese Dai Nippon Printing and Toppan Printing to develop its global smartcard business, hoping to boost the sales to 90 billion yen in three years. Multos-based smartcards can use any application compatible with the system, thus eliminating the need to develop individual applications for different chips.

 

On October 27 Sony, Toshiba, Hitachi, and Matsushita set up an IC tag promotion consortium, which aims at establishing IC tag guidelines and conveying Japanese makers' ideas to international organizations. The consortium will carry out IC tag research, which will then be available to Japanese makers.