14 DAY TRIAL // It seems that mobile phone users in EU will soon be able to use one charger for a wide variety of mobile phones coming from more than one handset maker. The European Commission announced on Monday that top mobile phone makers agreed to back an EU-wide harmonization of phone chargers, a move that comes as great news for the environment.
“People will not have to throw away their charger whenever they buy a new phone,” said EU Industry Commissioner Guenter Verheugen. At the same time, he also estimated that each year thousands of tons of waste in Europe represent unwanted phone accessories. According to the European Commission, the agreement will result in the creation of an EU norm, and that the compatibility will be ensured via a micro-USB socket present on future mobile phones.
According to the news, some of the companies that already announced intentions to back the EU decision include Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, Apple, LG, NEC, Qualcomm, Research in Motion, Samsung and Texas Instruments, which account for around 90 percent of the European market. The first phones compatible with standard charging devices are expected to come to the market as soon as next year, stated an EU executive.
Some estimations point towards the fact that there are around 400 million mobile phones in Europe, and 185 million are bought each year. The upcoming chargers will only become available for data-enabled phones, which are expected to account for about half of the devices purchased in 2010. According to the Commission, as people get rid of older handsets, all data-enabled mobile phones in Europe should use standardized chargers within the following three to four years.
Industry group DigitalEurope stated that, while at the beginning the new data-enabled handsets would come along with the chargers, they would begin to be sold separately after a certain period of time. For the time being, there are no details regarding a possible price tag for the standardized charger. “We're assuming this new European initiative will have a knock-on effect globally and manufacturers won't just be doing this on the European market,” Verheugen said.