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Apple Sees Light and Joins Interchangeable Charger Brigade
(30 Jun 2009, BWCS Staff)Finally, the years of wasteful duplication of mobile phone chargers may be about to come to an end. Today the European Commission announced that ten major mobile phone manufacturers and chip-makers have agreed to produce standard chargers. The big ten, which unexpectedly includes Apple, have all agreed to sign a Memorandum of Understanding to harmonise chargers across Europe on the basis of the micro-USB connector. The decision has been almost universally welcomed as a victory for common sense and one which will hopefully reduce electronic waste.
Initially, Apple, a relatively recent member of the big mobile company club, had seemed likely to remain aloof from the plans to offer standardised chargers. When the scheme was first mooted at the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona in February, Apple was one of the major names notable for its absence. On the other hand, some of those companies that had appeared willing to go along with the scheme, such as the operators 3, Orange, T-Mobile, AT&T and Vodafone, are now nowhere to be seen.
The main signatories of the MoU will be Apple, LG, Motorola, NEC, Nokia, Qualcomm, Research in Motion, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Texas Instruments. According to Apple the only reason that it did not appear in the first cut, is that it is not a member of the GSMA, which organised the first list at the Barcelona shindig.
The first generation of new inter-chargeable mobile handsets is expected to hit the EU next year. The EC believes that cutting the number of chargers sold unnecessarily will lead to important environmental benefits as it will reduce the associated electronic waste, which currently amounts to thousands of tons.
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