Mobile phones go to the left, the Internet of Things goes to the right, where is the future of eSIM?

The much-anticipated eSIM has made new progress!

On January 1, China Unicom officially announced that China Unicom's eSIM wearable device one number two terminal service has been gradually expanded from the pilot to the whole country. This is another major innovation of China Unicom after it took the lead in launching the eSIM independent number service nationwide on March 29, 2019.

This news has once again sparked discussions among users about eSIM. What is the current application status of eSIM in China? How do the three major operators plan to deploy eSIM? When will eSIM truly enter the smartphone field in China? Next, let's find out.

Wearable devices and the Internet of Things become the main entry points

Although the concept of eSIM has been around for a long time, due to various reasons, the application of eSIM in my country has been extremely slow and has never been widely used. However, in recent years, with the active promotion of mobile operators, equipment manufacturers, SIM card suppliers, IoT companies and other mobile ecosystem parties, China has made significant progress in eSIM technology.

At present, eSIM technology has been applied to wearable devices such as smart watches and smart companions. In the next step, it will be widely used in electronic products such as Internet of Vehicles and Industrial Internet of Things.

Among them, operators played a very important role.

It has to be admitted that operators need to use physical SIM cards to "guard" a large number of users, which has slowed down the process of eSIM entering the mobile phone field to some extent. However, the rapid application of eSIM in wearable devices and the Internet of Things is inextricably linked to the layout and promotion of the three major operators.

The layout of the three major operators

China Unicom is the first operator to launch an eSIM business pilot in China, and is also the first telecom operator to launch eSIM business nationwide.

As early as 2015, China Unicom formulated a strategy to develop consumer Internet of Things business based on eSIM and built an independently developed eSIM management platform; in early 2017, the eSIM platform was launched; in April 2017, the eSIM independent number service was launched.

On March 7, 2018, China Unicom announced that it had officially launched the "eSIM One Number, Two Terminals" service in six cities, including Shanghai, Tianjin, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhengzhou, and Changsha. Soon after, Beijing Unicom also launched this service.

In June this year, China Unicom stated at the second GSMA eSIM Forum that China Unicom firmly believes that the Internet of Things will be an important area for eSIM applications in the future. To this end, China Unicom has conducted research on the application of eSIM to the Internet of Things. Among them, the attempt to introduce the RSP specification into the Internet of Things eSIM terminal can effectively improve the applicability of eSIM in this field.

On January 1, 2020, China Unicom announced that the eSIM wearable device one-number dual-terminal service will be expanded from the pilot program to the whole country.

So far, China Unicom has cooperated with more than 30 enterprises and more than 50 consumer Internet smart terminals to complete eSIM technology docking, including wearables, tablets, PCs and other terminals such as smart speakers, smart rearview mirrors, POS machines and other categories, covering various application scenarios such as sports, family, medical care, entertainment, education and so on.

China Mobile has also made great efforts to apply eSIM to wearable devices and IoT. It is understood that on May 25, 2018, China Mobile IoT officially launched the China Mobile Inside plan for smart IoT, and released the first eSIM chip in China, providing "chip + eSIM + connection service".

On June 1, China Mobile announced that the "One Number, Two Terminals" service will be officially launched in seven cities, including Tianjin, Shanghai, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Chengdu. Through the One Number, Two Terminals service, users can bind their mobile phones and wearable devices, share the same number, call charges, and data packages, and the same number will be presented to the outside world regardless of whether they are calling or called, allowing users to easily enjoy the freedom of "communication by raising their wrists".

On January 23, 2019, China Mobile's virtual eSIM card began a free trial operation in seven cities, including Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Chengdu, Tianjin and Nanjing, for a period of about 10 months.

In November 2019, China Mobile officially released a fully independently developed IoT eSIM chip, CC191A. This chip has the characteristics of high performance, high speed, large storage, perfect security architecture, and is suitable for highly integrated applications. It is mainly used for industrial and consumer eSIM cards and can be widely used in mobile communications fields such as the Internet of Things and smart hardware.

As early as 2016, China Telecom stated that it was opposed to mobile phone eSIM at this stage, actively followed up on international and domestic standards, promoted the formulation of regulatory policies, and organized security assessments. However, China Telecom supports IoT eSIM and released the IoT eSIM specification in 2016. At present, the construction of the eSIM platform in the IoT field has also been completed.

At the China Telecom Intelligent Terminal Technology Forum in 2018, China Telecom stated that it has established an eSIM operation and management system and is actively promoting the application of eSIM technology in the fields of pan-intelligence and the Internet of Things. It will also be divided into two types of services at the product level: independent eSIM and one-number dual-terminal services in accordance with specifications such as the "White Paper on Embedded UICC Card Requirements", "APP and Third-Party Smart Wearable Devices", and "Service Access Specifications and Technical Requirements".

In November 2018, China Telecom announced that it would pilot the "one number, dual terminals" service in seven cities, including Chengdu, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Wuhan, and support four smart wearable devices.

It will take time for eSIM to be used in smartphones

Although the development of eSIM technology in consumer electronics and the Internet of Things in China is as rapid as in other major countries and regions, companies participating in the eSIM survey unanimously believe that eSIM is developing slowly in the smartphone market.

As of now, despite the growing support of smartphone manufacturers and mobile operators for eSIM in the wearable device market, the Chinese mobile phone market has not officially enabled eSIM. The latest Apple iPhone in mainland China will not support eSIM function, but will use pluggable dual SIM cards.

Although eSIM has been deployed in international roaming services, the implementation is basically based on soft SIM cards. Several OEMs, including Huawei (Tianjitong) and Xiaomi (Xiaomi Roaming), have developed their own soft SIM card solutions for international data roaming services and applied them to mobile phones and IoT devices.

For example, Huawei has installed SkyTone on some of its high-end smartphones, such as the Mate 7 (and above) and Honor 6 Plus. SkyTone allows Chinese mobile phone users to access mobile data services when traveling abroad without having to buy a new SIM card, and the pluggable physical SIM card remains as the primary number. The service is currently available on some mobile phone models in about 20 countries in Europe and Asia.

Xiaomi Roaming allows you to purchase a destination tariff package on any Xiaomi phone with an embedded eSIM. Once you arrive at your destination, you can activate the package in the app and use the temporary local tariff number in the eSIM to roam and surf the Internet internationally.

Similarly, domestic mobile phones such as OnePlus and Hammer currently have similar functions, and the principle is to achieve this through the eSIM embedded in the mobile phone.

In addition, GSMA said that although dual-SIM phones are more popular in China and some countries have launched smartphones with dual eSIM/swappable SIM card functions (iPhone is popular among China's wealthier population), the timing of China's introduction of eSIM functions on mobile phones has not yet been clarified.

However, GSMA is very optimistic about the introduction of eSIM in Chinese smartphones. GSMA predicts that by 2025, 20% to 35% of smartphones in China will be connected via eSIM. In 2025, China will also become the world's largest eSIM smartphone market, accounting for about one-fifth of the world's eSIM smartphone connections.