Smaller SIM Cards Could Be Standardized By The End Of This Year

Soon after Apple proposed a smaller SIM card standard, a German company Giesecke & Devrient made a proposal of its own standard. The German company that developed the first SIM card in the world has proposed a standard for “nano-SIM ” cards that are 15 percent thinner and one-third smaller than the current smallest micro-SIM cards used in the iPhone 4S, iPhone 4 and 3G iPad.

Apple has expressed interest in decreasing the size or removing SIM cards entirely, which would allow the company to even more shrink its devices or to clear space for new or larger components. Last year, it was reported that Apple worked with Gemalto to create a built-in SIM card with a chip that would store subscriber data. But although several carriers and GSM Association supported Apple’s initiative, other European carriers threatened to discontinue iPhone subsidies, if Apple went ahead with the plan.

With carriers’ objections to the idea of GSM phones without SIM cards, Apple apparently redirected its efforts on reducing the size of the SIM card even more than the smallest micro-SIM size. Those efforts resulted in company’s proposal for the smaller SIM card standard, which has been reviewed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) and has received support of many carriers.

G&D has already submitted its proposal to the ETSI, but it is unclear whether the nano-SIM standard is related to the SIM card design proposed by Apple. Reportedly, ETSI hopes to standardize the new nano-SIM design by the end of 2011, and there will be an adapter for backward compatibility of new SIM cards with older devices.