China's Two-Phone Rule: What eSIM Compatibility Really Looks Like Across Asia

Key findings

A market gated open in two weeks, for two phones

Until October 2025, no iPhone sold in mainland China supported eSIM at all: every model used two physical nano-SIM slots. That changed fast. China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology approved commercial eSIM trials on October 13, 2025. Two days later, on October 15, 2025, all three state carriers, China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom, launched eSIM support. The iPhone Air went on sale a week after that, on October 22, 2025, as the country's first commercially available eSIM phone. Apple later extended eSIM support to the iPhone 17e; as of July 2026, those two models remain the only iPhones that can activate a China-mainland carrier eSIM, and activation still requires an in-person ID check at a carrier store.

Outside mainland China, the picture flips: Apple and Google's ranges have supported eSIM since the iPhone XS (2018) and Pixel 3, standard across Japan, South Korea and most of Southeast Asia. Hong Kong and Macao sit in between, with most iPhone models there still sold as dual physical SIM, save for a few exceptions. Our compatibility panel of 251 models tracks 51 regional variants; 13 of them diverge from their parent model on eSIM, and every single one is a China-market variant. No other region we track produces this kind of split inside a single model line.

Compatibility by brand

Reusable figures (CC BY 4.0)

Quote freely with attribution to Drift Asia and a link to this study:

• Only two iPhone models, the iPhone Air (A3518) and iPhone 17e (A3635), can activate an eSIM from a mainland Chinese carrier as of July 2026; every other iPhone sold in China keeps a physical SIM tray.
• China's three major carriers launched commercial eSIM service on October 15, 2025, two days after regulatory approval from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
• Of the 51 regional device variants in our compatibility panel, 13 diverge from their parent model's eSIM support, and every one of them is a China-market variant.
• Weighting Asia's mobile vendor mix (StatCounter, May 2026) against our brand-level eSIM compatibility table puts the region's smartphone eSIM compatibility at 41.3 to 55.7 percent.

Methodology

Estimates are calculated by weighting each region's smartphone vendor market share (StatCounter, May 2026) against a brand-level eSIM compatibility rate, expressed as a low-high range per brand from its official device support list (Apple, Samsung, Google, Xiaomi and others). StatCounter's "Unknown" category and brands outside the top six per region are combined into a single low-compatibility residual (15 to 35 percent) since this bucket is dominated by budget, rebranded and unofficial-import devices. StatCounter measures web traffic (installed base), not the current year's sales, so figures should be read as a compatibility estimate for phones actually in use, not for this year's shipments alone.

For Asia specifically: this calculation assumes each brand's eSIM policy applies uniformly across the region, which does not fully capture mainland China's own restriction. Since October 2025, only the iPhone Air (A3518) and iPhone 17e (A3635) can activate an eSIM from a Chinese carrier; every other iPhone sold in mainland China, a market with substantial weight inside the continental StatCounter figure, keeps a physical SIM tray. Our Asia range should therefore be read as an upper estimate for a China-inclusive Asia; a single market such as Japan or South Korea would likely score higher on the Apple share of the calculation.

Reference point: GSMA Intelligence estimates 5 percent of smartphone connections were actively using eSIM at the end of 2025, projected to reach 10 percent by the end of 2026, a measure of share of smartphone connections actively using eSIM (not device compatibility) rather than device capability, and therefore not directly comparable to the compatibility estimates on this page.

Transparency

Drift Asia sells travel eSIMs. All assumptions and the brand-level rate table are published above so the calculation can be independently checked or recomputed with different weights. Data questions and interview requests: via driftasia.com.