Simply put, the SIM card is like the "ID card" of a mobile phone: as long as the SIM card is available, the mobile phone itself does not need to be bound with a number-the user can change the mobile phone at will, as long as the old SIM card is inserted into the new machine, the number will not change, and communication functions such as telephone and network can also be used normally (the authentication between the mobile phone and the base station can be normal). Especially in the background that the hardware of smart phones is progressing faster and faster, and consumers will change their mobile phones in a year or two, many people may unconsciously enjoy the convenience of SIM card "changing mobile phones without changing numbers".
Of course, just as everything has advantages and disadvantages, the original intention of SIM card is to facilitate the management of numbers and reduce the cost for consumers to change their mobile phones. However, the inventor obviously didn't think that when the mobile phone entered the era of national intelligence, the SIM card itself became a shackle that restricted the further development of the equipment.
Why? The reason is simple, because the SIM card is too big!
As we all know, although the screen size of smart phones has expanded a lot in recent years. But since it is a mobile phone, it means that no matter how "big screen" and "comprehensive", portability is still limited in size. It is generally believed that the screen of a smart phone should be 7 inches-beyond this limit, it can no longer be considered portable.
But at the same time, in the smart phone, higher-performance main control, larger-size radiator, larger-capacity battery, plus HiFi module, large-size speaker, zoom lens, NFC function, infrared emission ... these functional modules are constantly emerging with technological progress year after year. For ordinary consumers, you may only see the experience improvement it brings, but for mobile phone manufacturers, how to "cram" more and stronger functions into a limited body has always been a problem.
ESIM is an innovation, but it has not been well received.
20 1 1 year, Apple proposed the "nano SIM" standard. This is certainly not the first time that the SIM card has been "slimmed down", but what is special about nano SIM is that it is the first time in history that the mobile phone manufacturer has reformed the appearance of the SIM card itself before the standard-setting organization. It is not difficult to see that the design of SIM card at that time has lagged behind the internal structure design of smart phones, which has become an obstacle to the development of mobile phones.
Of course, friends who often read our Sanyi Life articles know that in the face of this situation, the SIM card association is also "discussing one thing", simply abandoning the shape of the traditional replaceable SIM card and launching an e SIM (embedded SIM card) with only a small chip size. While greatly reducing the size of the SIM card, it is equivalent to completely eliminating the SIM card slot into the garbage dump of history.
In addition to volume reduction, eSIM has many advantages. For example, because it is directly welded to the main board of the mobile phone, the problem of poor contact caused by repeated plugging and unplugging of the traditional SIM card and contact oxidation will no longer occur. At the same time, because eSIM does not need card slot and Cato at all, it also means that it can not only greatly save the internal space of the mobile phone, but also simplify the waterproof design to some extent. Of course, the most important thing is that eSIM can be changed by users and operators through software, and there is no need to go to the offline business hall to see the face of customer service ~
Of course, it is precisely because of the stickiness of eSIM itself to operators' customers and the actual threat to the employment situation of operators' bottom employees that it has "offended" many people all over the world. Whether at home or abroad, operators are delaying the popularization of eSIM on the grounds of "safety" or "technical reasons".
ISIM was born: Is the good days of operators finally over?
However, technological progress will not stop. If it makes sense for eSIM to just make the SIM card into a single small chip, it still needs the mobile phone manufacturer to purchase and install it into the mobile phone. Then, the brand-new "iSIM" technology directly and completely ended the history of SIM card as an independent component in mobile phones, and ended the offline business hall in its own "number portability" and irresistible way, further amplifying the destructive power of eSIM.
Because the so-called "iSIM" actually directly uses the encryption module embedded in the existing mobile phone chip, and directly integrates the encryption, authentication and storage functions of the SIM card into the main control of the mobile phone. In this way, compared with the previous eSIM, iSIM has many unique advantages.
First of all, iSIM essentially "simulates" a SIM card directly with the security module of the mobile phone processor, completely eliminating the independent SIM chip and further making room for the motherboard of the smart phone. Secondly, because of this, the adoption of iSIM will not bring additional costs to smartphones. Theoretically, many existing mobile phones only need to update the software, and they can directly obtain the capabilities of iSIM and the potential of "number portability" in the software. Not only that, because iSIM was put forward later than eSIM, it was more advanced in some technical details. For example, according to Gemalto, a manufacturer of technologies related to SIM cards, the latest iSIM has fully met the technical requirements of the 3GPP organization for "5G SIM cards", which can provide higher security and concealment than the existing physical SIM cards in practical use, and even has a power-saving technology specially designed for the 5G era, which can effectively reduce the communication power consumption of 5G mobile phones.
Of course, the most critical and fatal point is that iSIM does not need a new processor. In fact, Snapdragon 855, which is widely used in flagship mobile phones, is fully compatible with iSIM. What does this mean? To put it simply, in the past, because operators indicated that they were unwilling to support eSIM technology, mobile phone companies naturally did not take the initiative to integrate eSIM chips in their mobile phones for cost reasons. In this way, operators can further delay the implementation of new technologies on the grounds that "eSIM is not popular on mobile phones". However, what if the existing mobile phone processor suddenly has a more advanced "iSIM" capability that fully meets the requirements of 5G technology after the software update? This is equivalent to a large number of flagship mobile phones suddenly built-in "port number transfer" function out of nothing, and it is also compatible with the port number transfer function of 5G networks.
As a result, for operators, their user stickiness is bound to further decline, and in order to retain customers, "speeding up and reducing fees" is bound to be more active and frequent. What's more, as predicted by Sanyi Life, once opening cards, changing numbers, switching networks and changing packages through software on mobile phones becomes a "mainstream operation", the traditional offline business hall will further lose its existence value, and the infrastructure attributes and "traffic pipelining" of operators will further accelerate. And this, for consumers, is a good thing with nothing to lose.