Apple VP Talks About Apple SIM and Whether It’ll Come to the iPhone

The new Apple SIM card isn’t likely to be found in iPhones anytime soon, as it makes more sense for the iPad, said Apple VP iPhone, iPod and iOS product marketing Greg Joswiak during an interview at the Re/code conference. His reasoning is very simple: Apple opted for its own SIM card because it wanted to give customers more choice (via FierceWireless).

“It’s about the customer experience,” he said during an appearance here at Re/code’s Code/Mobile conference. “We ultimately don’t know who you are going to use as the carrier, [and] we want to make it as easy as possible.”

Since the majority of iPhones are sold through carriers, there wasn’t a case for Apple putting its own SIM card into a device that generates more than half of its revenue. The number of customers buying an iPhone outright is much smaller compared to the ones going to a carrier.

The advantage of Apple SIM – used with the iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 3 – is that allows customers to switch between different carriers’ service plans on the tablets. However, there are some issues being reported by users: AT&T, for example, locks down the Apple SIM card after the customer activates the card on its network. So, if you want to switch network, you need to purchase another Apple SIM . By comparison, T-Mobile doesn’t lock its customers into its own network.

Joswiak also took the opportunity to outline Apple’s approach to products and customers. “To us, it’s about the experience,” he said. Apple has a “naive belief,” he said, that “if we just make a better product or a better experience, there will be a market for it.”