ARCchart: End of the line for the SIM Toolkit?

Bill Ray at ARCchart has a lengthy analysis of the factors which "could spell the end for the SIM Toolkit," which "enables applications running on the SIM to communicate with the user through interaction with the handset." Ray writes that:

Commands such as “Display this menu” and “send an SMS message” are passed to the handset for execution and any user inputs are passed back to the SIM. Supported on just about every handset, and specified as part of the GSM standard, the SIM Toolkit was designed specifically to address this operator requirement. Operators like things which go on the SIM: it is owned by the operator who has complete control over what it can do and it physically represents the operator’s brand to the customer.

However times are a changing and the article is a good primer (at least for me) on how network operators can develop specific menus and applications using the SIM Toolkit, Java and native apps...