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Apple tolls the death knell for physical SIM cards

MacDailyNews

Sep 11

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iPhone Air is the thinnest iPhone ever made, packing pro performance into a breakthrough design.

Apple’s latest iPhone Air marks a milestone as the company’s first smartphone to launch with exclusive eSIM support for cellular connectivity worldwide, forgoing any physical SIM card slot found in nearly all competing devices for linking to mobile carriers.

Chris Welch for Bloomberg:
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For consumers in the US, this is nothing new. Apple ditched SIM cards with the iPhone 14 generation three years ago. Rather than make buyers manually fiddle around with the tiny plastic card containing their wireless account info, eSIM achieves the same end result through software. An embedded SIM card within the phone can be programmed with your wireless number after you’ve completed the setup process with your carrier. Typically, it can all be done in under five minutes.
Outside the US, however, consumers still default to the thought that their handset and mobile service contract are separate entities. In China and other locales across Asia, having slots for multiple cards is an expected feature. And indeed, Apple has continued to support those habits with each new iPhone model. But that’s changing with the iPhone Air.
Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Steven Tseng and Sean Chen attribute the sluggish adoption in China to the country’s strict policies around technology and security. Only one carrier, China Unicom, currently supports eSIM, and customers must activate the feature in person, which undermines the promise of convenience. According to an online support document, Apple will be adhering to stringent regulations with the specific iPhone Air model that’s shipping to China: eSIMs from carriers based outside the country cannot be installed whenever users are in the mainland…
[I]f the iPhone Air turns out to be a hit despite its eSIM-only design, other phone makers will have less incentive to preserve the physical SIM card. Much in the way Apple led the mobile industry’s removal of the headphone jack, it seems on track to nudge these tiny plastic SIMs to extinction as well.

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MacDailyNews Take: We’ve never had an issue with an eSIM, whether in the States or traveling. It’s up to China to catch up, not for the rest of the modern world to handicap itself for the sake of compatibility with the CCP’s myriad authoritarian regulations.

Apple’s support document, “Using eSIM with your iPhone in China mainland” currently states, “When traveling outside of China mainland, you can activate an eSIM from a local carrier on your iPhone Air, model A3518 that was purchased in China mainland. To do so, you must have location services enabled. eSIMs from non-China mainland carriers can’t be installed while located in China mainland.”

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