SIM card and digital security specialist Gemalto announced this morning it has been selected by China Mobile – the world’s largest mobile operator by subscribers – for the commercial launch of the operator’s latest generation of SIM cards. Applications made possible by the new Gemalto cards – known as ‘FullMultimedia’ – include a specially designed China Mobile multimedia phonebook and other features such as e-books, a local information search engine, a Chinese/English translator and preloaded content. The cards were first deployed by China Mobile to offer services related to this summer’s Olympic Games in Beijing.

China Mobile has also selected Gemalto’s smart card web server technology as the basis of its mobile service deployment. In a statement, Gemalto said that the server – which is housed inside the SIM – makes the most of the handset browser to deploy rich content and applications with no need to customise the handset.