RIM Attacks Apple's Nano-SIM Tactics
Research In Motion has sent a letter to a standards group complaining about Apple's tactics in the battle over the upcoming nano-SIM standard, joining Nokia in trying to shed doubt over Apple's efforts. — RIM, Nokia and Motorola Mobility are involved …
Context & Ripple Effects
The nano-SIM fight has been escalating all month: Apple's proposal drew fire from Nokia on the grounds that it fails pre-agreed requirements, and by March 28 Nokia escalated to saying it would withhold 'essential' patents entirely if Apple's design won — leverage that could leave any adopted standard unlicensable. RIM's letter to the standards group, following its earlier entry into the dispute covered in the March 20 report on Apple fighting Motorola, Nokia and RIM, turns a two-company spat into a three-way bloc.
What changed with this story is coalition-building: RIM joining Nokia in casting doubt on Apple's tactics, with Motorola Mobility described as involved alongside them. The technical details at stake were laid out in The Verge's March 26 explainer on what Apple and Nokia each want in your next phone.
First-order effects
- The ETSI vote on the nano-SIM design now faces a coordinated opposition bloc — RIM, Nokia and Motorola Mobility — rather than isolated objections, raising the odds of a delayed or amended decision.
- Apple's proposal is now contested on process grounds (tactics) as well as technical ones, giving the standards body a governance complaint to weigh alongside Nokia's stated refusal to license essential patents under an Apple win.
Second-order effects
- Nokia's patent-withholding threat makes the vote a licensing negotiation in disguise: other handset makers must now price in the risk that the winning nano-SIM carries royalty friction, tilting support toward designs backed by willing licensors.
- Carriers and device vendors waiting on nano-SIM for thinner hardware face schedule uncertainty, since no design can ship broadly without resolution of the essential-patents question.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, SIM-standard-setting becomes a proxy war over mobile patent portfolios — companies like RIM and Motorola Mobility with licensing stakes treat standards votes as leverage points rather than engineering exercises.
- A bloc-veto dynamic inside standards bodies, where incumbents coordinate against a single proposer, points toward slower, more politicized component standards for future devices.
The trend: Mobile component standard-setting is shifting from technical merit votes to contests of patent-licensing power, with incumbent holders forming coalitions to block designs from rivals with large IP positions.