There's been a lot of noise lately surrounding the battle over the standard for the design of the new, smaller SIM card dubbed the nano-SIM, with companies like Apple, Nokia and RIM battling over whose SIM design will be chosen. The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) was due to vote on the matter today, but it looks like we'll have to wait a tad longer for a decision to be made, as the ETSI has chosen to delay the vote. It'll now be at least another 30 days before a vote is expected to take place.
In other nano-SIM news, RIM has filed a complaint with the ETSI, accusing Apple of trying to add votes in its favor by having its own employees register as representatives of companies like Bell Mobility and SK Telecom. RIM is asking that those people shouldn't be allowed to vote since the ETSI doesn't allow voting by proxy. So far there's been no ETSI response to RIM's claims.
Earlier this week Apple said that it'll offer royalty-free licenses to patents related to the nano-SIM if its design, which looks like a micro-SIM with all of its plastic removed, is chosen. Nokia has been fighting Apple's design, saying that it could get jammed in micro-SIM slots and is less compliant with the ETSI's standards than Nokia's own design, which resembles a microSD card. Obviously the battle over the nano-SIM design has been pretty heated lately, and it's not something you'd expect to be related to the look of a new SIM card. Now that the vote on the new design has been pushed back, expect each company involved in the fight to continue to trade blows with the others and try to offer reasons as to why their particular design is superior to the others. Things will definitely continue to heat up over the next month or so, and we'll let you know of any major developments as we get them. Stay tuned!
Via MobileBurn, GigaOM, The Verge, RIM letter
