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Apple Offers Nano-SIM Design Royalty-Free

Posted by Soulskill on from the there-can-be-peace-in-our-time dept.

judgecorp writes "Apple is reportedly offering its nano-SIM design free of royalties, hoping to swing the standards decision its way, for the next generation of even tinier SIM cards for phones and tablets." Nokia has reportedly responded that they still prefer their own design.

7 of 113 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Royalty free? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Take a look at this comparison:
    http://socialbarrel.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Apple-Pushes-For-Nano-SIM-Design-To-Become-Standard.jpg

  2. Why by M0j0_j0j0 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The question is, Why the fuck are we still using SIM cards?

    1. Re:Why by ewieling · · Score: 5, Interesting

      That is not my question. My question is Why the fuck don't all phones use SIM cards?

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    2. Re:Why by tlhIngan · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The question is, Why the fuck are we still using SIM cards?

      Because the alternative is what we have in the US, with Verizon and Sprint selling phones that are basically only for them and make it a pain to move to another phone.

      Whereas it's trivial for someone to go and take the SIM out of their old phone, and stick it in their new phone, and be done with it. SIMs basically separate out the "subscriber" part of the service from the phone.

      It also allows people to have different subscriptions for their phone - say travelling. They pop out their home country SIM, and stick in the foreign country SIM, and away they go (provided it's not SIM-locked) - no need to buy another phone for that country for service and all that.

      I suppose to go beyond that would be Apple's "reprogrammable SIM" idea where it's built into the phone and you enter in your subscription details and it automatically downloads the necessary SIM data. Basically it boils down to a phone that asks for your username and password to your account. And you know the majority of passwords would be weak and there'll be huge inquiries as to why people can easily steal cellphone service from others.

      Anyhow, standards orgs like 3GPP are all about politics, and not technical superiority. A lot of standards are set with the "if you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" type of thing. Companies are jostling around trying to get their patented stuff in the standard, and this can result in stuff like TD-CDMA being part of 3GPP even though it's not really used except by one company.

      And the entire mobile industry is afraid of Apple. They sell very few phones overally, but they command the majority of the profits - Apple makes more profit than the rest of the mobile industry combined. It doesn't matter if the Apple proposal is superior, or if Apple gives everyone the right ot use it royalty free. They're afraid of what would happen if Apple gets a leg into the patent ballgame - all of a sudden the juicy cash Apple pays everyone for FRAND patents dries up or becomes smaller.

      Apple's got a snowball's chance in hell. Everyone else will block it purely because letting Apple in means less money from Apple to everyone. And Nokia's got majority voting rights right now - letting Apple in means Nokia no longer can sway the vote easily for standards.

      If Apple came up with an iPhone that got 1 year battery life, Gig+ bandwidth and all that, and made with everyday parts and really cheap, they still will reject it purely from the monetary standpoint.

      It's politics, and it's why everyone's fighting so hard on something so trivial as a nano-SIM. I'm sure Apple didn't invent the micro-SIM (it was probably already in the spec for years, just Apple was one of the first to use it). And Apple certainly didn't invent hot-swap of SIMs (also in the spec - but hard to do, and the iPhone does let you do it successfully. Other phones, like the Galaxy Nexus let you remove the SIM, but require you reboot the phone to initialize the new SIM).

      Hell, I bet no one but Apple is going to ever use nano-SIM (there's a FEW phones out there using micro-SIM that aren't from Apple, but there's pretty hard to find).

    3. Re:Why by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      No kidding. I just replaced my light-duty *1999* phone with a Nokia C1. It had no problem reading and writing to the 13-year-old 16k SIM. It was kinda jaw-dropping to see a standard adhered to so well.

      (YMMV - plenty of people have old cards read okay, but then the phone jams up on write. Nokia did their homework however.)

  3. Re:Royalty Free? Apple? by Daniel_Staal · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Apple's always been found of royalty free standards and products in markets were they need some minimal presence, but aren't actually competing...

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  4. I might actually side with Apple this time. by pecosdave · · Score: 3, Interesting

    "the principal issues remain the technical superiority of our proposal and that Apple's proposal does not meet the pre-agreed ETSI requirements... Apple's proposal for royalty free licensing seems no more than an attempt to devalue the intellectual property of others."

    That last part of it, about devaluing the IP of others looks like Nokia wants the licensing fees for their patents. Apple's no saint, but in this case I'm either with Apple or a third design that belongs to neither of them.

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