[3GScottishUser]

From Reuters (15/02/2006):

BARCELONA (Reuters) - Mobile phone group Orange plans to launch SIM cards this year that can store up to 8,000 times the data stored on present day SIMs, potentially helping to transform a traditional phone into a multimedia player.

The France Telecom unit said on Wednesday the 512-megabyte "MegaSIM" cards could store up to 130 songs, three movies or 80 games, compared with existing 64 kilobyte cards which could at best store a phone book and some text messages.

"The SIM will... remove the need for clumsy additional card slots that are required today to provide storage in multimedia handsets," the firm said in a statement.

Orange, which plans to roll out these cards across Europe this year, said the MegaSIM was the result of a collaboration with M-systems, Oberthur Card Systems and LG Electronics.

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=internetNews&storyID=2006-02-15T191835Z_01_L15522377_RTRUKOC_0_US-TELECOMS-ORANGE-SIMCARDS.xml

[maxspank]

512 meg sims are a good thing, but they won't remove the need to have card slots in phones, especially seing as you can get 1gb mmc's and 2gb aren't far away.

[Ben]

I agree, though it's an interesting concept. I don't very much like the idea of keeping any of my data on something the network retain ownership of, though, especially as SIM cards don't exactly fit into your average card reader!