It's not the first time the claim has been made, but this time it's backed, and demonstrated, by a reputable manufacturer, so every phone could be getting NFC soon.

Inside Secure is an established player in the smart card industry, and promises to demonstrate a SIM with embedded Near Field Communications circuitry at the Cartes show currently taking place in Paris. If it works reliability then it could bring NFC capability to any GSM phone, and, more important, hand control back to the network operators.

Putting Near Field Communications, or any radio technology, into a SIM is tough. The SIM is tiny, and often sandwiched between the battery and the motherboard, so getting a radio signal in, or out, is really hard. SIMs also only get six milliamps of current to work with, which encourages frugality.

Source -

http://www.theregist.../nfc_sim_again/

Does this make the release of the Galaxy Nexus by Google pretty out of date already? I've personally never used contactless technology and prefer using my fat fingers to perform operations but if it works and is taken on a commercially viable route then this will be huge if it works.

Going to be too hitty miss I think. Lots of SIMs are in a little metal cage and, as you point out, under the battery. Only way this could work predictably across all phones is if the phone manufacturers purposely fit the SIM near the plastic casing in an agreed area. And why would they? It's in their interests to keep control of NFC.and sell new phones with NFC as a feature, and not to restrict their design flexibility.

Also this would make it difficult to use NFC to its full potential, because the phone's ROM really needs to directly support the NFC circuitry. The electrical interface for the SIM won't be optimal for large data transfers, or have any reverse access to the phone's own memory anyway.

So, although it could prove useful for some things, it's obviously no substitute for a proper NFC equipped smart-phone.

I think we are going to see a lot more multi-SIM phones too, and there's more complication for the idea!