The survey measured results from 2008 and revealed factors, such as the recession, have affected the global card market. However, 19.4 billion cards were manufactured globally, indicating a slight increase of .06 percent over 2007 and the dollar market also increased by 4.3 percent, up from Dollar 9.3 billion in 2007 to Dollar 9.7 billion in 2008. The survey also revealed North America held its position as the largest producer of cards, with more than 8.8 billion cards manufactured in 2008. The Asia Pacific region continues to gain global share with 4.9 billion units manufactured. Europe remained in the third position with 4.1 billion units manufactured, followed by Latin America with one billion units manufactured and the Middle East/Africa (MEA) with half a billion units manufactured. The regions surveyed were North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America and MEA. The products surveyed were plastic cards of all thicknesses including traditional cards—with and without magnetic stripe, and chip cards that include contact, contactless and combi-cards for diverse applications such as financial, identification, telecom and transit. Also analyzed, regional demographics and card-specific statistics such as market share for value-based secure cards, financial hologram cards, other cards, those cards that do not have monetary value, and financial other cards, those cards that do not use a hologram. www.icma.com