> From the article, it looks a lot like Qualcomm trying to coopt the eSIM success now a few years old, by saying the electronics of iSIM are a custom block in their silicon, not a separate small chip.
I haven't gone into the details but certification is a major undertaking. So yes the logical functionality of what goes into an eSIM may be almost identical to that of an iSIM but integrating that same logic into an SoC means a whole new certification process. In particular certification will consider resistance to physical attacks and the hardening employed will be effected by the SoC integration. You need to bury critical nets deep in the metal stack to help defeat probing attacks and add detectors for intrusions. Integrating these across the whole SoC could be a particular challenge so work may required to apply them only across the chip area used by the iSIM. New design work was likely required for the on-chip interfacing between the iSIM and the rest of the SoC, again needing to ensure it complied with certification requirements.
I don't think it's fair to describe this as a mere PR piece. Significant work will have been required by backend engineers to integrate the iSIM so it's suitable for certification plus all the work required to generate the collateral for certification.
Qualcomm haven't created a whole new piece of technology here but this doesn't mean integrating the existing technology wasn't a major amount of work and a milestone worth publicising (especially as it is the first instance of this).