Apple has proposed a standardized SIM card smaller than those it currently uses in the iPhone and iPad in order to be able to produce thinner devices, Anne Bouverot, Orange’s head of mobile services, tells “Reuters” (http://macte.ch/SIIst).

“They have done that through the standardization route, through ETSI, with the sponsorship of some major mobile operators, Orange being one of them,” she told the Paris leg of the Reuters Global Technology Summit.

She said the process would take time and that the first devices using such SIM cards could come out next year. Believe it or not, Apple has no comment.