Simulity task is to contribute to the creation of innovative mobile services. The first promoted innovation, integration of a smartcard in smartphones services, has been chosen based on the following reasons :
- SIM cards have been used to create the first value-added services on 2G closed operating system mobile handsets. These services were complex and secured (operator portals, mobile banking) but with limited ergonomics due to the poor integration between the handset and the card.
- Mobile handsets are now powered by open operating systems (Symbian, Windows Mobile, Palm OS, Embedded Linux) and open development platforms (Java, Embedded .Net) to design value-added services with good ergonomics. However these services are not as secure or as portable as their smartcard-based ancestors.
- Current desktop applications are not using the capabilities of the mobile handsets or the embedded smartcard much.
Before creating Simulity, its founder, Nicolas Bacca, participated in the definition of the communication standards between a handset and its smartcard and built the first next generation distributed smartcard,smartphone,server applications pilots (portable operator portals, fast SIM card administration, mobile application protection, DRM) for Oberthur Card Systems.
Creating Simulity is a way to pursue this integration independently to focus on the market release and interoperability of these solutions, and create an experts pool on emerging mobile technologies (such as NFC or embedded handset security modules) to contribute to their smooth integration into the existing architectures.