IDEMIA, a leading French SIM card maker makes in India standard SIM cards — its production capacity is over 600 million SIMs, which accounts for 67 per cent of its global production. It has its largest plant in Noida. It has provided over a billion standard SIMs to Indian customers, and controls 40 per cent of this market. It has manpower strength of over 5000 employees. It has its global R&D centre in India. It has worked with Aadhar programme for its biometrics.

It now intends to enter embedded SIM (eSIM) market. This is a next generation technology. An IC card is embedded in a mobile device. Consumers here can change their networks remotely or through a QR code. They need not wait for a physical SIM to come to their home or office.

It intends to invest heavily in India to set up the eSIM manufacturing facility.

eSIM devices would make it easier for the telecom customers to switch to a local network while travelling abroad. They need not buy a local SIM.

These cards can be used in machine-to-machine IoT domain, especially in connected vehicles.

There is going to be some resistance to this new product. It is likely to wane in time to come. Telcos may not push eSIMs aggressively as customers switch networks easily. In the next few years, some 30 per cent devices will be powered by eSIMs. The market is expected to witness a growth rate of 30 per cent.