@ So what?
"Is it such a big deal not having a SIm card in your phone. All CDMA handsets in N.America and India (til date) have SIM less handsets.
SO whats the problem here, I ask ?
Apart from the ususal control freakery of Apple jibes, whats there to lose for Fanbois?"
The obvious loss is that if I want to go fishing, boating or some other activity where I'm not prepared to risk my iPhone I can simply remove the SIM and throw it in my old SE T600, if my wife leaves the charger for her phone at her mother's I can throw her SIM in the S-E until we get the charger back, if my company phone dies I can throw the SIM (different provider) from that into my iPhone until its replaced, if I'm working overseas I can buy whatever local prepaid SIM gives the best deal for local calling and throw it in my iPhone, if I want to make cheap calls outside the free minutes on my plan I can throw in a prepaid SIM from another provider that gives cheaper daytime calling.
These are all things I've done in the past that would be impossible with an embedded SIM function - and such a device would be a loss to all of us ultimately, regardless of what type of phone we own, as it's a fairly safe bet that in the long run the embedded SIM will work out cheaper and be adopted by all manufacturers.
Remember - most of the world's iPhone users are not locked into a network or plan and just because some unfortunates are doesn't mean that no-one needs/wants to be able to change the SIM. I own the phone, so I determine which network it operates on and what sort of plan I have. Vodafone sold me the IPhone, I provided the SIM - they have no idea which network I connected it to.