Emerging technology

By peepeople

  • Beginning

    Developed by the GSMA in 2012, eSIM technology has made its way into the consumer space with use cases such as automobiles, smart home devices, smartphones, tablets and wearables. Apple started to widely adopt it in its lineup mainly in 2018-2019.

  • Apple

    Apple first introduced eSIM support in September 2017 with the Apple Watch Series 3.

  • First Implementation

    In 2017, during Mobile World Congress, Qualcomm introduced a technical solution, with a live demonstration, within its Snapdragon hardware chip associated with related software (secured Java applications).

  • Google implementing eSIM into phones

    Google unveiled the Pixel 2 in October 2017, which added eSIM support for use with its Google Fi service.

  • First Apple iPhones to implement eSIM

    The first iPhone models to support it were the iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, and iPhone XR, announced in September 2018. The first iPad model was the iPad Pro (3rd generation), announced in October 2018.

  • Microsoft introducing eSIM

    Microsoft introduced eSIM to the Windows 10 operating system in 2018

  • Samsung introducing eSIM

    Samsung shipped Galaxy S21 and S20 series smartphones in the US with eSIM hardware onboard but no software support out of the box. The feature was later enabled with the One UI version 4 update

  • iPhones without sim tray

    In September 2022, Apple unveiled the iPhone 14, iPhone 14 Plus, iPhone 14 Pro, and iPhone 14 Pro Max, the first iPhone models not to have a SIM card tray and to work exclusively with eSIM.