Mobile phones around the world are taking on the role of a “PC” – personal communicator – the task for which the traditional PC was initially developed. Applications originally restricted to high-end smartphones and multimedia phones are now becoming more pervasive in mid-tier feature phones.

With music and video downloads, mobile TV offerings, word processing and Power Point capabilities, phones have a rapidly increasing need for more memory so that individuals can be entertained and productive anytime, anyplace. The mobile phone’s ubiquitous presence in everyday life has turned it into our friend, our confidant and a personal repository for our most sensitive data, both personal and professional.

For all of these reasons, mobile phone users need more memory that is not only portable, but secure. It should have the ability to operate independently while remaining connected to the network, with backup server functionality for greater peace of mind. According to Strategy Analytics, a global research and consulting firm, information stored in mobile phones is growing at an 80 percent compound annual rate. The fact that the worldwide flash memory market grew last year to almost U.S. $10.5 billion, an increase of 40 percent over the previous year, corroborates the enormous hunger for memory. Helping meet this need, flash storage is found in almost all consumer applications requiring memory. Apple’s decision last year to embed flash memory in its top-selling MP3 players, is perhaps the most important demonstration of flash storage’s reliability, cost-effectiveness and ubiquity.

However, not just any flash memory will suffice. Many applications require memory that is secured by Crypto Engines, which keeps personal and corporate data protected while guaranteeing content service providers their fair share of revenues. Whether the data is purely user-generated, provided by a corporate IT server, or licensed rights-protected, it must be secured by efficient, tamper-proof and industry-accepted methods.

Satisfying memory cravings

The current mobile phone architecture has three recognized means to satisfy memory requirements. Mobile network operators (MNOs) have huge server farms and ideally, they would prefer subscribers to store data on their networks, enabling operators to charge for each attempt to access content. However, aside from the privacy issues involved, most networks are not equipped to provide 24/7 global latency-free upload and download support. This remains a goal, but one that is still unachievable.

Another alternative is to build secure high-density flash memory, known as Embedded Flash Drives, into mobile phones. People are increasingly using smartphones and even feature phones with 128 megabytes (MB) with more of built-in memory. In this age of subsidized handsets, the cost of embedding high densities means that MNOs can only make this solution available in higher, less price-sensitive market niches.

Providing memory card slots in handsets can lower the handset cost to MNOs. This enables users to add as much extra personal storage to their phones as they need, in order to support different multimedia habits. But the variety of memory card form factors in addition to the inherent lack of security and operator control over these cards, make them a less desirable solution for MNOs.

Securing subscriber identity

So where does the SIM card fit into the picture?
Since the dawn of the GSM standard some 15 years ago, SIM cards have retained the same, limited role as smart cards that secure authentication for access to network services. Since the average SIM card today only provides 64Kbytes of memory and lacks an interface that is fast enough to support multimedia streaming downloads, MNOs have been losing a unique opportunity to provision subscribers with the high-density applications and content they demand. Subscribers, for most part, have been satisfying their memory needs elsewhere.

The rise of mobile communications and SIM

-    In 1953, the first mobile phone based on a cellular system, made by Siemens, was used by the Minister of the German Post. A direct descendent of Marconi’s wireless technology used in radios, it weighed 16 kg and cost 8,000 marks (~$4000).
-    In Feb. 1987, the "Groupe Spécial Mobile" (GSM), later renamed “Global System for Mobile Communications”, was set up to develop the specifications for a pan-European mobile communications network.  
-    In 1992, the first roaming agreement was signed between Telecom Finland and Vodafone.
-    In the early 90s, the first GSM networks that were deployed used the Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) to ensure the security of subscriber authentication.
-    Up until 2004, the amount of memory available on SIM cards remained unchanged, ranging from 16Kbytes to 64Kbytes.
-    In 2005, M-Systems announced the first SIM card with up to 1Gbyte of memory, enabling mobile network operators to provision subscribers with revenue-generating multimedia services and applications.