The survey measured results from 2009 and revealed the global economic recession continues to interrupt growth throughout the industry, with 19.2 billion cards manufactured globally, indicating a slight decrease of 1.0 percent from 19.4 billion in 2008. The survey also revealed the dollar market increased by 5.2 percent from 9.7 billion dollars in 2008 to 10.2 billion dollars in 2009. Despite being down 1.7 percent from 2008, North America held its position as the largest producer of cards, with more than 8.7 billion cards manufactured in 2009. The Asia Pacific region continues to grow with 5.2 billion units manufactured, up 5.4 percent from 2008. Europe remained in the third position with 3.9 billion units manufactured, followed by Latin America with somewhat less than 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 all plastic cards including traditional cards—with and without magnetic stripe, and chip cards that include contact, contactless and dual interface cards for diverse applications such as financial, identification, telecom and transit. www.icma.com