China issued more than 300 million IC (integrated circuit) cards annually over the past three years, accounting for over 14 percent of the world total, according to sources with a national conference on information technology application.

The telecommunication sector is the largest consumer of IC cards. In 2003, China Telecom and China Unicom, two leading mobile telecom service companies, 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, the sources said.

The number of IC cards for public telephones issued also grew rapidly year by year.

IC cards are also widely used in such areas as social security, waster saving systems on college campus, public order administration, and water, electricity and gas supply systems in cities.

Insiders predicted that IC cards would be applied more extensively in identification cards, automated teller machines, banking services and digital radio and TV systems in the future.

(Xinhua News Agency September 25, 2004)