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Apple’s iPhone 15 models that only support eSIM are still limited to the US despite the company’s reported earlier plans to expand this to other countries and regions.
The Cupertino giant started this in the iPhone XR. However, this was observed completely with the release of the iPhone 14 series in the US, where it introduced entirely eSIM units to its customers. While last year’s release covered only the said country, Apple shared its goal to bring it to other customers from other markets, detailing the benefits of the eSIM system.
“With eSIM, you don’t need to obtain, carry, and swap physical SIM cards (which can also be lost), or wait for them to arrive by mail,” the company noted in October last year. “On your iPhone, you can store eight or more eSIMs, which will be there whenever you need them. You can have two eSIMs active on supported iPhone models at the same time.”
Unfortunately, this feature will remain solely available in the US versions of the new iPhone 15 units this year. As shared by different Apple customer reports from other nations, Apple’s respective websites for the countries feature images of iPhone 15 with a SIM card tray, indicating that they will still support physical SIM cards. Aside from the US, no other foreign Apple websites seem to show the same version of the eSIM-only iPhone 15 versions from Apple.
This is not Apple’s fault, however. While the iPhone maker indeed promised to bring eSIM-only smartphones to other markets, there are still limited carrier companies that fully support the said service. According to Apple, only a handful of wireless carriers and service providers offer eSIM services in other countries. As such, even if Apple sells iPhones with eSIM support, customers won’t feel the feature’s value that much without the plethora of eSIM service options in their own markets.
