author: Konrad Serafinski
The EU Wants a Universal Charger for all Smartphones; Apple Protests
The topic of developing a common charging port for all mobile devices returns. The European Union will hold a vote, after which we will find out whether Europe will soon be united by a single charger. As you can guess, not everyone is supporting the idea, namely Apple, among others.
European legislators have called for the creation of a single charging port, a common type for all smartphones on the market. This is not really a new thing, because the idea of introducing a common port for all mobile devices, such as tablets, smartphones or e-book readers, was already suggested several years ago.
In 2014, the European Union proposed a directive to harmonise legislation on the radio device market. This is where the need to develop a common charging port to reduce electronic waste was included. However, the initiative was rejected due to the lack of co-legislators. In view of the debate that took place on January 13 2020, a voting session will soon be held to take a final decision on this issue.
It is worth adding that in one of the documents summarizing the activities related to port unification so far, the EU indicated that the policy of reducing electronic waste has not been fully implemented. You don't have to be a genius or a clerk to see it for yourself. The market is still full of Apple Lightning, USB 2.0, USB type C or whatnot.
Apple, which may be considered by many as the greatest enemy of "unification", has responded sensibly to the EU report, claiming that a common charger for all devices is bad for the environment and will simply freeze innovation in this segment instead of promoting it. The company also added that Lightning is used by about a billion devices. The introduction of the new port will increase the volume of electronic waste on a massive scale and reduce user comfort, which would paradoxically be the most contradictory to the main idea behind the Directive.
It is hard to say how the charging ports affair will eventually turn out. We can already see that Apple is taking discreet steps to surrender. One of them is the introduction of a USB C port on the latest MacBook. Who knows, maybe the same socket will appear on iPhone 12?