Analysis Well, Tim Cook has cried "havoc" and let slip the SIM dogs of war. For several years Apple has sought to replace the hardware SIM card, and hand itself ultimate control over which mobile network the consumer can choose. With the latest iPads, it has finally implemented the strategy.

Coming soon to a device near you

It’s a colossal step, and if successful, the transition of the mobile industry will be complete. We’ll have gone from a world where operators choose what devices run on their networks, to a world where device manufacturers choose what network you can use on their devices - from a world where mobile networks were gatekeepers, to one in which Apple and Google are the gatekeepers. Before we examine this, let’s step back a moment and see how this came about.

Back to Bakelite

For decades telephony in most countries was controlled by a state owned monopoly. The monopoly not only maintained the network, it ran the services, and sold you the equipment, often being a significant device manufacturer in its own right. In the USA a private monopoly rather than state-owned monopoly (AT&T) did the same job. Courts decreed non-Bell equipment could run on Bell’s network in 1968, in the "Carterphone" decision. It took longer here. In 1980, under orders from Keith Joseph, the telephone part of the Post Office became "British Telecom" – but well into the 1980s you needed to use a BT approved "terminal". The name itself was a giveaway, the telephone was merely the last piece in a chain.

Then came deregulation, bringing with it the dangerous notion that the customer should choose what they used, and the equally subversive idea that competition might give the consumer more attractive choices than those a backroom technocrat might come up with. When European countries thrashed out digital mobile standards, device freedom using a SIM card was part of this. Subscribers could move from one device to another without having to register with the network manually each time.

You may argue that this was to encourage home manufacturers as much as anything else (the famous 1987 Copenhagen GSM MoU doesn’t mention SIM cards but talks about encouraging European industry), but the result benefited both. And you may argue that "locked" devices negated the vision of portability. But a compromise was reached in most markets, whereby if you bought a phone on HP from an operator, you had to stick around. The UK was particularly fortunate in having a strong independent retailer, Carphone Warehouse, which insisted on selling SIM-free devices. The notion of compulsory, all-powerful gatekeepers was a distant memory.

Now let’s see how the world might look with Apple as that sort of gatekeeper.