Submitted by Apple, LG, Motorola, NEC, Nokia, Qualcomm, Research in Motion, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, and Texas Instruments have agreed to standardise their smartphone chargers in Europe using micro-USB. “The European Commission announced today that 10 mobile phone producers, which represent some 90 percent of the mobile phone market in the European Union, have signed a voluntary agreement to use standardized chargers for mobile phones using a micro-USB connector. The agreement addresses the EC’s concern that mobile phone chargers create needless electronic waste.” A single charger for everything! It almost brings tears to my eyes. Honestly. Even Apple. There it is. The tear.
I wonder, is this the end of the nefarious 30-pin iPod cable?
Doubt it. More likely Apple will just include free iPod to MicroUSB adapters.
The standardization calls for a Micro-USB port on the device itself.
The US could learn a thing or two from this move.
This is so unbelievable I’ll believe it when I see it.
now, that’s news! (…and not the 2nd page type…)
I hope this move will not only be beneficial to EU users, but the hole world.
(I wish luck to Apple fans too. So they can use the micro USB cable for data too!)
ACTUALLY, it’s not that good news.
Manufacturers can provide a stupid dongle instead of the micro-USB connector… It was too good to be true.
Anyone hoping for Apple using standard connections can cry now:
“UPDATE: Apple’s responded, and in a statement told Pocket-lint: “As we’ve said in the past, we are committed to the Apple dock connector and this initiative will not require us to change it. Today’s memorandum gives manufacturers the option to provide an adapter that connects with the universal charger”
http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/news.phtml/25149/next-iphone-charge…
I live in the U.S. What the hell are *we* supposed to do?
I know. We’ve made our bed: Lie in it.
Kudos to the EU, who have always been smarter than us, over my lifetime, at least.
Edited 2009-06-29 23:14 UTC
Get the hell out of here ASAP maybe?
MOre seriously though, this might affect us here as well if it proves to be easier to just standardize on MicroUSB altogether for these companies instead of producing one sort of connector for the US, another for the EU, etc.
You must be very young, but then again so is the EU.
Not young. But slightly lazy in my phrasing. I wondered if anyone would point that out. There was a Europe before the EU. And I’ve always been impressed by it.
And so is the U.S.A.
Best news I have seen in years! I wouldn’t expect those companies to agree on today’s date let alone phone charger standards. It’s got to be a f’n miracle. Speechless.
Re: http://www.osnews.com/thread?370253
Thank God for strong Govt. Industry alone would not have sought let alone brought us a solution (waves EU flag with pride).
Right, because this is what the governments should be concentrating on, not fixing unemployment rates, or housing problems, or any number of problems we’re actually facing. sUre, next to that, the kind of charger your iPhone or whatever has is just so important. Sounds like they’ve got their priorities a bit mixed up to me, not that any government has their priorities straight at the moment it seems. And be careful with that “strong government.” It’s a fine line between strong government and totalitarianism and, once crossed, not easy to pull back.
Don’t forget that the government is not a single entity, in any form. So there are people that actually do everything they can to solve your described problems, but there are people who look to how to improve on other things, when not in crisis.
Interest rates and housing prices should be left to the market. Some government setting them is what you call ‘central planning’ and we have seen where that leads to.
When it comes to standardisation a government can really do some good by pushing through a convention here and there.
Nothing anywhere is ever wholly left to the markets.
There is a lot a government can and do do to control house prices without actually setting them. The obvious one is to pass legislation and change taxes to make it cheaper and easeir (or more expensive and harder) to build new houses and renovate old houses. They can also change laws governing how banks can lend money to potential buyers. Basically maniuplating the supply and demand in the housing market.
They can also control rents by changing the laws governing landlords and tennants.
It is not a binary system with free market and central planning being the only two values. It is a fuzzy continuum and no country is at either extreme.
This IS important issue. Ecology isn’t any less important than unemployment, in my opinion.
This initiative was started long before the financial crisis.
Besides, governments can’t all just stop doing the normal stuff they do, just because there is a crisis going on. The crisis is just a situation that is an additional concern next to the normal running.
Totalitarianism? We are talking about a sane standard for phone charging. Where are the protests about the dictatorship over wall sockets?
I dare say we have by far too many different types of wall sockets in Europe.
It is a nightmare, 1500 km from here, and all the electrics are useless unless one has a bunch of adapters.
Standardizing them AND forcing every electrical equipment maker to support them (+ adapter for plugging them into today’s sockets). would be a fine thing. Unfortunately no Politician has the guts to pull off this stunt.
By the way, it would be a really good thing, if USA finally took up the metric (SI + derivatives) system of units. Not doing that will cost loads of money in the long run.
The thing is though, I like my wall sockets and plugs. I’d rather have a converter in some other country than have another country’s socket/plug forced upon me. Before you know it, we have these ugly US ones, or the humongous UK ones (with fuse to go) ;^(
And to call it a “nightmare” that something over 1500km is different – this is Europe, 1500km will land you at the other far side. Noone travels that much, regularly.
JAL
Perhaps I was getting carried away, who knows? Perhaps ‘effective govt.’ or ‘a govt. that works’ would suit you better?
The financial crisis wasn’t caused by governments being too tough, it was caused by their being too soft, and in some cases political parties (note, not the state) seeking to gain from short-term economic boom conditions.
The EU works slowly but surely – it’s at least a 10-yer gap between conception and implementation in many cases but take a look at what they are doing on preparing for new technology, digital assets, and – you cannot have forgotten – fixing tech industry dominance by this or that company (notice I didn’t use the word ‘monopoly’ so that we don’t spend the next few hours quibbling about semantics – life’s too short :-).
That’s precisely what government is for. It’s not for creating wealth directly but for making good environment for private companies and individuals to operate in.
There was no force used; it was a voluntary measure (although the degree in which it was voluntary is up for debate though) to which the various companies signed up for.
I don’t want to sound that I am going off on an Ayn Rand/Friedman/Hayek/Von Meises tangent but do you really think that it is appropriate to use the coercion and the threat of violence of the state simply to implement policies that could be otherwise accomplished through free association? where commissars stand on their pulpit talking about the ‘good of the people’ and the rights of the individual are crushed in favour of this more important collectivist notion of society they’re selling but in reality it is just another power grab.
When ever I see, “Thank God for strong Govt” I’m always waiting for the inevitable “thank goodness the collective have corrected my ways, without them I might have fallen into the sin of individual thought and deciding for myself”.
Hooray, another victory for standards that make sense and make life easier
All the news items make it seem that the USB thing is completely new. However, my 10 euro Alcatel has just such a connector.
JAL