According to Reuters, Apple, along with the likes of Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, LG, NEC, Qualcomm, Research in Motion, Samsung and Texas Instruments have agreed to adopt the micro-USB connector standard for smartphone chargers in the European Union. Together, the companies represent about 90 percent of the European mobile market.
At first, smartphones in Europe will come with a standardized charger but after an unspecified amount of time the chargers and devices will be sold separately. The cost of the standardized chargers have not yet been determined. Compatible devices should start rolling out sometime next year. Smartphones are expected to account for almost half of all new mobile phone purchases in 2010.
Of course the standardized chargers will only be compatible with European smartphones, but it is hoped that other countries will eventually follow suit.
So what does this mean for Apple’s proprietary dock connector? Only time will tell. How do all of you feel about this new standardized connector? Is it a welcomed change or do you have tons of dock connector devices that you wouldn’t know what to do with?
Aslong as it’s in addition, or comes with an adapter, I’m happy.
anyone remember the scart video connector disaster?
Honestly, I don’t care much either way. Granted, a USB Mini B cable is much easier to find in many cases, but the Dock Connector has become reasonably ubiquitous to the point that finding one of those isn’t terribly hard either.
Apple can’t replace the dock with mini USB, it does much more than micro-USB ever could (audio, video, power, data, remote control, etc.), not to mention the plethora of devices that would suddenly become incompatible and obsolete. I suspect if they were to follow suit, there would either be an additional micro-USB port added to the iPhone (unlikely), or they would simply change their chargers to use micro-USB and use new dock-to-micro-USB cables.
Precisely my thoughts.
That’s good news as waste will ne reduced. How many old phone chargers have we or have we given to pseudo recycling programs that can’t really handle them.
Very nice step indeed