December 28th, 2007Future of Wireless: Will SIM cards be the next batteries not included?
Imagine a world where next to the shelf corners store, beside the batteries and the memory cards, are 2GB, 4GB, 8GB wireless SIM cards. You can buy prepaid “minutes” already at the cornerstore. However, with voice becoming one of the less and less interesting things you can do with wireless, why not buy prepaid data as well?
Consumer electronics makers already trying to find ways to make their devices more connected (think digital cameras that automatically syncs your photos to the internet and/or your home computer wherever you are). Or imagine your car’s onboard navigation console and media player is running low on bandwidth, just pop in another pre-paid SIM card and you ready to go.
What do you think? does this model of distribution for data make sense? Does it sound farfetched?*
*I should mention that prepaid data-only SIM cards (even unlimited data) can be found commonly in many shops in Europe and Asia, markets where unlocked devices are more prevalent.
