Also, there's very high-speed communication between the main processor and the SIM card [in the new reader], about 600 kilobits-per-second. It's all because of the transaction time. The Linux OS gives us greater control, but also you have to overclock the SIM card if you want to maintain high speed and security simultaneously, because of the encryption and authentication routines. And because it's open-source, if you have a problem, you can troubleshoot by yourself, you don't have to rely on any vendor.

Cost is also an issue because of the number of card-readers. If you have to pay a license fee for every device, it adds up quickly.

CWHK: Did you have trouble finding suitable Linux programmers?

Kam: Firstly, all of our development team is based in Hong Kong. And yes, I think it is difficult to find the right skill-set: we're dealing with security, wireless communication and smartcards. It's not easy to find these specialized skills in Hong Kong, but I think we did quite well.

We were able to achieve some improvements. At first, the start-up time per reader was about ten seconds, but some of our applications needed a faster time. Our engineers were able to cut it down to four or five seconds. And we have limited flash memory on the readers, and they were able to cut the size of the Linux kernel from 1MB to 512KB, a 50 percent reduction. These are the types of things that we are only able to do if we have the source code and the [Linux] drivers.