If mobiles are becoming pocket computers can SIM cards become like game CD’s, learning CD’s etc. If I want to learn English could I buy a learn english SIM card put it in my mobile phone.
Would I have to have a high end mobile phone ? For SIM cards they have to conform to the form factor so that they fit but my guess is that you could get powerful SIM cards.
For the user they would have to change SIM cards frequently. If the mechanisms in cell phones are not designed for many changes then these could break.
I do not see VAS being marketed directly on SIM cards.
Is there any potential in SIM cards to provide content directly with the mobile acting as the device ?
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Nothing is impossible guys with the kind of advancements in software and silicon technologies. It is continuous race! Today’s sim card is much powerful than a Desktop PC 20years back which was not affordable by individuals. So, today’s desktop can become a sim definitely not in 20 years but should not take more than half a decade.
Todays sim’s have flash about 1MB & speed of 30MHz!!!
Yes, coming to communication – serial link with highest baud possible. Should not be a wonder in couple of years one can support a lean tcp stack with 1GB ethernet on both master & slave side.
Then why CD & you can do what you want. Mobile phone should become a just a terminal of Rs 500-1000 and SIM will do the rest.
Hello Sanjay,
SIM cards were designed to store secure data. Radio networks use this information to authenticate the device, before they assigns any resources to service that particular device. The memory capacity of a SIM card varies between 8-16K to 256K, it depends on the operators requirements.
I don’t think, SIM card should/can be used for storing games or other media content. Apart from very small storage (although this problem can be solved upto a point), the SIM card hardware interface is not designed to provide high speed data access to large amount of data. The data rate over the SIM card interface would be too slow to launch a learning CD or similar content. I don’t remember the actual data speed, but the hardware interface was originally designed to transfer couple of bytes of data during system authentication.
Also, as you mentioned, their would be security issues, usability issues and major deployment issues (every time you change a SIM card, operator has to update its backend).
SIM cards even today they work on similar lines like a storage device (slave-master relationship), albeit with a limited functionality. The information on demand services like cricket scores are enabled through the SIM. The idea here is the basic information is stored on the card and then, similar to a thin client, data is fetched from the back-end.
Better phones give the flexibility of a bigger screen and, maybe, more storage of data.
As for performing functions like a CD to the fullest, I do not see SIMs do it in the foreseeable future – the maximum memory in the SIM today is 128K…
Sounds dumb to me. It strips the “value-added” from VAS.
Don’t know about the SIM card but I do feel MMC/ miniSD cards will be a good way to sell VAS services of the sort you are talking about.