On February this year, GSMA has announced that together with other 17 mobile operators, they plan to develop a universal charging solution where a standard Micro-USB socket will be commonly compatible. The other companies involved in this planning are AT&T, Motorola, LG, Nokia, Orange, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, T-Mibile, and GSMA declared that this development would improve the phone users’ life in that of using the same charger for all other available units. BBC has declared that this plan was possibly a reaction to the pressure that European Commission made since it was noticed that more than 30 different kinds of chargers are in use across Europe.
The plan was to develop a charger to be three times more energy-efficient and to consume 50% stand-by energy.
At that time Apple was missing from the list of supporters, but yesterday they have announced their adherence to the list of top handset producers that control 90% of the European market. According to EU Industry Commissioner Guenter Verheugen, people would be able to keep their old charger while purchasing a new one, in this way the unwanted accessories will not make the object of thousand of tones of waste in Europe any more. The agreement will set for the developing of charges usable for data-enabled phones (reported to account for half of all 2010 purchased mobiles), which can deliver more capabilities than simple standard calls and SMS texting. In a period of three to four years from now all data-enabled phones will consider using the same standard chargers.
Mr. Verheugen said that this initiative would have a global impact, hoping that these chargers would also be usable in other countries beside the European ones. Next to the environmental benefits the initiative should mean less cost for companies, since the phone producers would stop delivering chargers together with their new items, so long as the micro-USB chargers will be all compatible.Producing this micro-USB socket has a major impact on Apple’s iPhone current hardware, since the iPod and iPhone dock-connector port would be altered, the port in question not only supplying iPhone with power, but it also enables the transmittal and receiving of data, both audio and video. The question is: what will further the Apple producers do? Will they consider replacing the dock port entirely or produce a second port for power only? The closest to the given situation solution possible would be a dock-connector to mini-USB adapter, but how would the unique image of iPhone model will be kept unspoiled since this initiative will affect the iPhones produced for US and other non-European countries?
