In an interview at All Things Digital’s D9 conference, AT&T CEO Ralph de la Vega hinted that the mobile phone carrier is working on a new, smaller SIM card standard for future smartphones just as Apple is already confirmed to be.
According to AppleInsider, the comment came after All Things Digital’s Ina Fried asked about the possibility of a new embedded SIM card as Apple had been rumored to favor, saving valuable space inside ever-shrinking handsets…
“We think that making the card smaller and shrinking the size is a no-brainer and we should be able to make that happen.”
The outspoken AT&T CEO stopped short of confirming the company was working with Apple, saying only that they were “working with the industry.”
This isn’t the first time a carrier has spoken of moving to a new SIM card standard, even though the micro-SIM currently used in the iPhone 4 and iPad were only recently introduced.
Back in May, France Telecom CE Stephane Richard said that Apple and carriers had come to an agreement over shrinking the cards, rather than going for a fully embedded solution – a solution that would stop users from swapping cards between phones, something more frequent in Europe than the United States. Richards also claimed the move would mean a ‘smaller and thinner’ iPhone in the future.
Another loose-lipped insider at France Telecom-owned Orange claims Apple submitted a new requirement for the new form factor to a European standards institute earlier this year, ready for the next iPhone to be released later in 2011.
During the same interview, de la Vega spoke of AT&T’s disappointment with the low sales of its Windows Phone 7 devices saying the fledgling platform, “hasn’t sold as well as Microsoft or us would want it to.”
Shocker.