Les Échos, a French financial daily, reports that deep divisions in the industry over the future SIM card standard made it impossible to reach an agreement at the ETSI meeting that started yesterday (Thursday) and ends today (Friday). According to the report, the participating companies have failed to reach an agreement and decided not to hold the envisioned vote. In accordance with ETSI rules, the vote will now have to be postponed by a minimum of 30 days.
It appears that Nokia's overt unwillingness to license its potentially essential patents in the event that Apple's nano-SIM proposal is adopted and Sandisk's resistance to Nokia's proposal have resulted in an impasse. Sandisk, too, holds patents that may be essential to a new SIM card standard.
I wanted to share this news from France, which Twitter user @Awax alerted me to, right away. I will try to obtain more information later. I will spend a couple of hours in a Mannheim courtroom today to watch an Apple v. Samsung trial, so I may find out about further developments only with a certain delay.
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