Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ), AT&T Inc. (T), Sprint Nextel Corporation (S): The Wireless Giants May Have More Than Unlocked Phones to Worry About

On Nov. 3, 2011, the U.S. Patent Office released a patent application from Apple that showed it was working on an iPhone that would use a virtual SIM card. In the application, Apple points out the desire among users to have the ability to buy wireless network services without having to change SIM cards.

The following week, The Sunday Telegraph reported that Apple gave up trying to bypass the mobile operators with its virtual SIM technology when carriers threatened to stop subsidizing the iPhone.

But the carriers may get run over by the auto industry, which can’t resist the huge revenue potential from so-called machine-to-machine connectivity in cars. Machina Research estimates that the automotive M2M market will explode from 90 million worldwide connections in 2011 to 1.3 billion by the end of 2020. That market, the research company believes, will be generating $199 billion in revenue annually by then.

If that day ever comes when cost-conscious consumers can shop around for the best wireless communication price and can then change carriers by having a new network merely reprogram a mobile device’s built-in virtual SIM remotely, that will mean the big carriers will have lost much of their subscriber retention power. And those carriers can probably thank the auto industry if it happens.

The article The Wireless Giants May Have More Than Unlocked Phones to Worry About originally appeared on Fool.com and is written by Dan Radovsky.

Fool contributor Dan Radovsky owns shares of AT&T. The Motley Fool recommends and owns shares of Apple.

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