Slashdot Mirror
Apple Offers Nano-SIM Design Royalty-Free
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.
I guess their standard will be the MicroSoft-SIM
There's a lot of news about this new standard but not much detail about the two competing designs. As for size, yes the cards are physically smaller and use less plastic, however, the design will probably contain details like power requirements, access protocols, etc that the manufacturers care about but the consumer does not.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
But it's rectangular! We all know Apple invented that. Ask Sam Sung if you don't believe me.
Take a look at this comparison:
http://socialbarrel.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Apple-Pushes-For-Nano-SIM-Design-To-Become-Standard.jpg
It has to be a rounded rectangle to be an Apple original. No sharp users, no sharp corners.
Perfect fit....
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
That is not my question. My question is Why the fuck don't all phones use SIM cards?
I really shouldn't have used someone else's email address for this account.
They're not just trying to mess with everyone; the article also states "It [Apple] also asks that all other patent holders accept the same terms in accordance with the principle of reciprocity." It seems to me that Apple wants access to patents that at least one of the other players has control of, and Apple is using this 'offer' to get free licensing, with the threat of trying to kick over the sand castle if they don't get what they want.
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).
First, it is often an attribute of FRAND terms. Otherwise standards could not exist if a company offered their patented technology free but could get sued if they used other technology in it. Like in SDRAM, all the players agree to FRAND terms so that memory you get from one manufacturer should work with memory from another manufacturer.
Second, what "threat" are you talking about? This is a proposal for a new standard. If ETSI does not like anything in the design, they can tell Apple they are not accepting their proposal. Just a few days ago, everyone here was predicting Apple would leverage their proposal to get more in licensing money. Apple says that they will offer it royalty free and suddenly Apple has dark motives and is personified as a bully.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Also, I like the idea of being able to switch phones without going through my carrier. I've been with carriers on the CDMA networks that don't have SIMs. $35 service fee just to switch phones. No thank you.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Apple's always been found of royalty free standards and products in markets were they need some minimal presence, but aren't actually competing...
'Sensible' is a curse word.
acquired from Nortel for $4.5 Billion, so I'm not sure what you are talking about when you say that Apple has no patents on traditional cellular functionality.
Also, they are offering their patents in this case royalty-free, so I'm not sure what there is here to hang them by.
With the current SIM standard, I can take the SIM out of a 10 year old phone, and pop it in to a brand new phone (except the iPhone that uses the micro-SIM "standard") and keep on talking. Obviously this is bad for business, so they want to make sure that I'll have to buy a new SIM to use my new phone. There is no other justification for it. There is no phone on the planet too small for a regular SIM, and as long as we need to hold the phones in our hands, there can't be.
As for patentable... EVERYTHING is patentable.... whether it SHOULD be is a completely different question, but one that is completely irrelevant to the companies involved.
And the whole point to both the micro and nano SIM standards is to force you to change to a new form factor as often as possible. As long as we have to be able to hold phones in our hands, there is no reason at all not to use full size SIM cards, unless you are trying to prevent people from simply taking the SIM out of their old phone and putting it in a new one....
That's pretty small as it is, going smaller so soon seems a bit unnecessary?
You'd think so, wouldn't you? But if you take apart an iPhone, there's really not much left once you've removed the display and battery. The micro SIM slot takes up a surprising proportion of the space on the board; I can see how making it slightly smaller would increase space for the battery.
What they think is a better standard.
We had that previously. With CDMA networks. Phones with no SIM card.
And you know what happened? The carriers got in league with each other and said "we agree not to activate phones you sold for your network, if you agree not to activate ours." The result was that you could easily switch carriers with a phone call, and keep your number, too, but you had to buy a new phone.
SIM cards get around that... They still sell phones that are "locked", but they can be unlocked. Once a phone is unlocked, it can be used with any carrier, when you put the SIM in.
*that* is why we're using SIM cards.
Poor picture.
Try this one: http://tectrack.blogspot.com/2011/11/forget-micro-sim-nano-sim-will-be.html
or this one http://www.ixwebhosting.mobi/giesecke-devrient-launch-worlds-first-nano-sim-card-micro-sim-card-than-the-small-13/
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Apple's proposal is a smaller form factor, but it's electrically compatible with existing SIM (it can be inserted into a physical adapter containing no electronics and work with devices designed for micro, or mini SIM cards), making it backward compatible. It doesn't fragment the market any more than micro or mini SIM does.
The Nokia proprosal has changes to technical specs, it would actually create a new, (non-compatible???) standard.
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
You do realize what a "full size SIM card" actually is? It's the size of a credit card. The SIM card you're referring to is already called a mini SIM card.
Technology moves forward and miniaturizes. Older stuff becomes incompatible. It's unfortunate the nano format is already being proposed before the micro-SIM is even commonplace aside from Apple gear, but micro-SIMs were standardized in late 2003, almost 9 years ago. It's hardly Apple's fault that no one else wanted to take charge and move the technology ahead. Like USB on the iMac, they're driving and popularizing an existing standard.
A better standard that works for them.
It's not the first time they've done this - they did it with Mini-Displayport too, and now you see those all over the place, and it works for Apple because they really like small and simple connectors.
"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.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.