China Demands Standardized Cell Phone Chargers
- December 21st, 2006
- Read 1184 times
- 13 Comments
Thanks to a move by China, multi-adapter phone chargers might be obsolete in the near future.
The country is demanding that its cell phone manufacturers switch to a standard input for recharging batteries in mobile handsets. It would be something similar to a USB port and would reduce electronic waste, since you wouldn’t be throwing out a charger every time you bought a new phone.
According to the story in Shanghai Daily, China has 450 million cell phone users and 100 million handsets are sold in the country each year. That’s a lot of extra chargers.
Unified chargers for all cell phones in China [shanghai daily]
I do wonder what the profit margin is on a cell phone charger. I think if an average customer buys 1.5 phone chargers per phone, as a manufacturer you’d turn a pretty profit given a phone charger is simply a transformer, and thus is made up of a lot of coils of wire. Add to that a 25 or 30 dollar price tag, and you’re “locking the catbox” with the profits your turning in.
I think it’s a great idea. I recently upgraded phones and have yet to purchase a car charger thanks to it’s amazing battery life and I didn’t want to pay $20 for something I would probably use a few times. It’s an LG (can’t remember the model #) and it lasted 4 days without being charged. While that’s nothing amazing, for it to keep it’s charge in 20 degree weather it is. With battery performance like this I might never need to buy another car charger again.
China is my hero.
It’s a great idea, but it’s never going to happen. The individual phone companies make a killing off accessories, and if that isn’t cause enough for China to reconsider, it’s got to realize it’s going to badly main an entire second industry (the accessory market). Great for the consumers, terrible for the suppliers
That Canadian:
Apparently it is happening in China. “Cell phone manufacturers will have to implant unified access on one side the chargers that can be connected to all brands of cell phones, the People’s Daily said on its Website, citing a standard issued by China’s Ministry of Information Industry yesterday.” But like you said, I doubt it will ever happen here. Why give up a $20 dollar profit on an item you have to buy to use your phone?
I’m an idiot
I read “Thanks to a move by China phone” and i figured them to be a huge cell phone provider or something. So this thing will become a law? Wow, maybe good can come out of a state-capitalist society
Lets see, the Chinese people don’t seem to care about living in a communist country with questionable human rights but damn if they need another adapter for their new cell phones! It just proves my theory that China isn’t converting to Democracy anytime soon ;-)
On a less serious note, why don’t they do the same thing for laptop batteries… it seems that each and every laptop have their own specialized battery that is not interchangeable with any others, even previous models from the same manufacturer… I hope this leads to a new revolution by the people about standardizing much of the tech gadgets we currently enjoy. I hope cell phone chargers are but the beginning!
Jon
This is great policy. Let’s have the government design phone chargers, laptop batteries, and more. Why not only one design for game remotes?
Isn’t this similar to the iGo approach? They have one charger and then have a small fee for each device connector that you want. They don’t impose on the hardware designers but have figured out a way to cut the onerous margins out of the replacement charger market. Isn’t that the whole intention??
No, those wacky innovative government people always know what’s best for us!
In addition to this, they should all use standard audio jacks for headphones. Proprietary jacks pairs with crappy earbuds makes for horrible mp3/cell phone mixups.
yeah, i really don’t like the 2.5 mm jacks that everyone is putting on their phones, but then again, they can charge you a fortune (relative) for a pair of crappy ear buds knowing that you can’t do anything about it. So goes the market.
Sure there is something you can do about it… you can simply choose NOT TO BUY THE PHONE Jon… simple as that ;-) We have far more choice (power) then you realize… the day we stop buying, leaving our brain in the car is the day these guys will stop throwing this kind of crap at us. If we don’t buy, then they can’t sell… they go under and a guy in his basement will take over the world. This is why Virgin is so successful in many areas… unlike the majority of companies out there… they actually listen to their customers. If only they had the resources to manufacture their OWN cell phones instead of being resellers then things would be far better.
Jon
This is all good until people start burning up all their phones, ipods, and digital cameras because they plugged the wrong charger into their electronic device just because it would fit. China is trying to save its people $20 and is going to end up costing them hundreds when they have to replace their phones and cameras, etc. Different devices have different power requirements - this is the practical reason for having all of the different tips. The fact that it allows them to make more money seals the deal.
No more spam, man!