Universal Mobile Phone Charger

Whenever I've gone to tech conferences, it's always the engineers in the crowd who stand up and ask why on earth we can't all agree to standardize the plugs and inputs on electronic devices. Most of us nod in agreement, but invariably someone observes that it's simply the price we pay for having a free market industry.

Hold the phone! The mobile phone industry has decided to do something about this. Mobile phone companies including Apple, LG, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson (which together account for over 80% of the mobile phone market worldwide) have struck a deal with the European Union to introduce the one-size-fits-all or universal mobile phone charger by January 2010.

The concept of the universal mobile phone charger is simple — all phones will have micro-USB plug-ins and the chargers will have micro-USB plugs.

This all came about under the leadership of the GSM Association, the mobile phone trade association, which announced at its 2009 Mobile World Congress that its 750 member companies have pledged to make phones that are compatible with the universal charger by January 2012 worldwide. With the EU deal in place to lead the way, this formerly unimaginable outcome will be a reality. Apparently the impetus for this decision was the concern about e-waste.

According to the United Nations International Telecommunications Union, there are now over 4 billion mobile phone users. Last year an estimated 1.2 billion cell phones were sold worldwide generating 82,000 tons of chargers, according to the GSM Association, and of course mobile phone users currently need a specific charger for their specific phone.

The advantages of a universal are obvious:

• Manufacturers will no longer need to make a unique model of charger for every unique model of mobile phone. Just the manufacturing cost savings will be enormous.
• When people buy a new mobile phone, they won't need a new charger.
• When they forget their charger they can borrow anyone else's charger.
• Everyone in a household won't each need their own charger.
• The number of chargers getting thrown out will dramatically go down.
• This is just plain rational and makes life easier for everyone.

I can only imagine that some engineer-turned-executive asked the inevitable question about standardizing the plugs on mobile phone chargers at a conference, and then some other engineer-turned-executive didn't resignedly say something about that being impossible because the free market forbids it, but instead said "that's a good idea; let's do that!"

Photo: ES