New technology for the iPhone 5? No problem, the Chinese are ready for it.
Just after Apple announced its new iPhone, the iPhone 5 yesterday, a type of “cutter” that can turn Micro-SIMs to Nano-SIMs appeared on Taobao, China’s version of ebay.
SIMs, or subscriber identity modules, are chips that identify and authenticate cellular phones and allow them to connect to networks. Micro-SIM and Nano-SIM are two sizes of the modules.
The Chinese have now worked out how to cut the Micro-SIMs to the new Nano size that the iPhone 5 uses.
Sellers claim that although Nano-SIMs are a relatively new technology used to free up more space inside the phone, the cutter will cut precisely around the chip on a micro-SIM (those used for the earlier iPhones) to the exact size of a Nano-SIM that will fit perfectly in the new iPhone 5.
The cutter itself is priced around 60 yuan ($10), and most sellers give a few extra plastic adapters that can convert a Nano-SIM card back to a Micro-SIM card.
Similar cutters that could turn a normal SIM card into a Micro-SIM card appeared just after Apple announced the iPhone 4 two years ago. Those cutters are now less than 15 yuan on Taobao ($2), so the price of the Nano-SIM cutters will likely drop in the future as well.
There are now over a dozen sellers of the new Nano-SIM cutters on Taobao, and all of them are from Shenzhen city, where the largest Foxconn factory is located.
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