ATT also working on Apple mini SIMs

AT&T's wireless head Ralph de la Vega in an interview late this week said his company was also joining in Apple's plan to develop an even smaller SIM card. He hesitated to directly make the link with Apple, like France Telecom's CEO did, but confirmed AT&T was "working with the industry" to shrink beyond existing sizes. It would "probably" happen, he explained to AllThingsD, and was something that was a logical conclusion.

"We think that making the card smaller and shrinking the size is a no-brainer," he said.

Apple is believed to be the primary impetus behind development of a standard that would be smaller still than the micro SIM, which itself was a standard first adopted by Apple for the iPad and iPhone 4. The electronics designer is often looking for ways to make its devices smaller and thinner, and at one point it had reportedly called for embedded SIMs that removed the card entirely. Such deals might have fallen apart after a pushback from carriers worried they would lose control over their relationship with subscribers.

De la Vega simultaneously fuelled suspicions that Windows Phone 7 wasn't selling well. Albeit without giving numbers, he acknowledged that the platform hadn't been selling "as well as Microsoft or us would want it to." Some promise hinged on both the Mango update for the OS adding major features as well as Nokia coming into the market and matching its hardware experience with the software.

Tablets were also likely to shift over time, he said. The iPad still dominated, but companies would eventually come in and take some share. Plans were still underway for an AT&T-native version of the Motorola Xoom, though the company was working on "a few issues." AT&T is known to be working on the HTC Puccini as one of its first non-Apple tablets and to launch it in the summer as its first LTE tablet.

By Electronista Staff

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iPhone, industry, Microsoft, Google, Orange, htc, AT&T, Android, Motorola, mobile phones, France Telecom, Apple, Windows Phone, iPad, Xoom, Puccini