On the road to Bandol

I was looking for updated statistics on Java Card, so I turned to LinkedIn to look at the Java Card skill. The information available is declining a bit (for instance, there is no trend or relationship to age any more, or at least I couldn’t find it). Yet, it reveals interesting information.

Over 3000 people claiming that skills

That is a bit more than I would have expected, but it remains tiny compared to the 5+ million people claiming a Java skill. It also represents around 10% of people with smart cards skills.

Java Card is big at Gemalto

Gemalto is the company with the most Java Card expertise. With 384 people, this is twice the number of Oberthur (176), and almost 10 times the number of Oracle employees (43, counting a few guys who are leaving Oracle).

Apart from the big 4 vendors and Oracle, we also have 3 chip vendors (NXP leading), an evaluation lab (FIME) and HID Global (I am not sure how to classify them).

Limoges is the world’s Java Card training capital

That one could be more surprising for some, but Limoges has had an active research programme on Java Card for years, and it trained 48 Java Card specialists. Caen could also claim the title, because the combination of their University and Training school gives a higher total.

Also interesting to note for euro-centric people, the number 2 spot belongs to Nanyang Technological University, and 2 other Asian universities are part of the top 10 (from Bandung and Singapore).

Hopefully, LinkedIn will keep the same information for a while, and we will be able to check this one out again. In the meantime, here is a snapshot of the information on May 17, 2016.

3393 LinkedIn members with the Java Card skill