Neil Shah, a tech industry analyst at Counterpoint has talked, written and deep-dived on the potential of eSIM across different connected things from drones to the Internet-of-Things and smartphones. The move that the industry was waiting for, was for someone like Apple to integrate eSIM in smartphones and it's finally arrived in Apple's latest high-end smartphones, even though Google was technically the first smartphone player to add it to last year's Pixel series, but a very tiny scale.

Apple showed a first glimpse of it with iPads and then Apple Watch. The iPhone wasn't going to escape the grand plan Apple has for eSIM and the stronghold it looks to have over end-to-end customer experience and profit from it at every stage.

All the new fall range of iPhones, both Xs series and Xr have integrated eSIM (except China SKUs). Some of Neil Shah's thoughts on this are as follows:

• Great addition for flexibility for consumers to choose a roaming country carrier or even within the same country, making the landscape very competitive.

• iPhone eSIMs will be controlled by Apple and it can dictate which carrier to partner with, support and show relative plans in a companion first or third party app or via any offline QR code-based activation by iPhone users.

• Apple could be the gatekeeper now since it will have control over the eSIM. Thus, it will demand a revenue cut for the activations happening through its eSIM.

• I believe eventually, Apple will also show its own plans white-labeled by companies such as GigSky or Truphone. [Wow, that's a leap.]

• This is great news for likes of Gemalto, G&D and others to not only sell eSIM chips but also on-demand connectivity management platforms to OEMs like Apple.

• Apple is in a position to charge a premium for the "convenience and ease of activating a new plan" on roaming or so forth.

• Apple will market this well and get an additional revenue bump from its affluent base of iPhone customers.

• Many operators have been fearing the moment when a powerful global actor like Apple, Amazon, Google or Facebook takes control of the data plans as well.

• Many operators have been reluctant to offer DUAL SIM or eSIM which enables many virtual SIM profiles as they don't want to cede control of the SIM.

• However, striking partnerships with these giants and sharing some revenue and treating them as resellers is the right (perhaps only) strategy for operators, as these players have become too powerful to fight or lobby against.

• Considering operator-Apple dynamics, it is still not clear how this will work within the same country e.g. US or Japan, which are core iPhone markets and where traditionally SKUs are different for the different carriers based on the underlying 2G technology.

• Maybe with just one Intel modem, Apple will have the same SKU across all US carriers and will benefit from eSIM scale and ease for consumers to switch or maintain plans between local carriers.

• However, the operators in the US and Japan are among the strongest and richest; it was notable that Apple struck a relatively cautious tone in how it communicated its eSIM plans – perhaps aiming to mollify its carrier partners – many of whom were present at the iPhone launch. We will watch the developing relationship with interest.

• eSIM in iPhones may thus come at a cost — it's just not going to be that open at least and the relationship will have been hard negotiated between Apple and participating carriers.

• Apple will make sure it gets compensated for every new plan activated on iPhone via eSIM which could make plans more expensive than buying physically from an MVNO such as Lycamobile unless Apple sparks a strong tussle between carriers to lower prices, so Apple and iPhone users are benefited more.

• One thing is sure, Apple will rake-in a good chunk of revenue from its eSIM move and effectively become a global scale MVNO.

• Those Apple revenues from Services which are nearing US$10 billion per quarter, will likely get a big boost by this eSIM move.

• Time will tell if affluent Apple users are okay to pay more via Apple eSIM service for the extra convenience. I think convenience will trump!!

Dear Mr. Shah: Please note that you should never, ever use the word trump in any way shape or form that's positive or you'll risk being lowered into a vat of hot lava and banned from the analyst world in America forever (ha!).

Kidding aside (kinda), what are your thoughts on Apple's integration of eSIMs and Shah's take on the matter?

Apple's first patent on eSIM solutions dates back to 2012, which is a patent fulfilled. Apple was granted their first patent for eSIM technology in December 2017 and their second in July 2018.

The graphic above shows Apple's SVP Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller introducing eSIM for new iPhones during their iPhone event held on September 12th.

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