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S Korea & China Mandate Common Chargers, Data Cables
mrbill writes "Seems that South Korea and China have mandated
Common Cell Phone chargers and data cables. No proprietary chargers and data cables any more. Must use USB for charging etc.
"
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This should happen all over. I wonder how much electronic waste is from cables and wall warts?
*It's not what you can do for the Dark Side but what the Dark Side can do for you!*
'nuff said
I hate it the way the same vendor changes connectors for different phones. Nokia gets the credit for using the same connector for all it's phones.
I have been waiting for this for a long time. This is one case where the sheer insanity of having 12 different chargers makes some sense for a legislated standard. It's unfortunate the industry couldn't play nice enough to not require it, but at the same time, it's NEEDED here.
You'd be pretty pissed if you could only use a GM-approved fill neck for your car. Why is your phone any different?
..don't panic
.... as there is a ton of money to be made in after market accessories (see the iPod for a great example). It would take a lot of balls for cell phone companies (for example) not to do this in places where these mandates don't exist and cut off the income stream of their accessory companies. So consumers in places where these mandates don't exist still have to "vote with their dollars" as it were to encourage manufacturers to make it happen.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
"However, always beware the law of unintended consequences. It seems likely to me that the costs for this will be passed on to us, one way or another."
I disagree. Costs will go WAY down. Instead of paying high prices for proprietary, hard-to-find cables, we'll be able to cruise into Wal-Martz and ask for a "cell phone cable." "That'll be five dollars, please."
"The mobile manufacturers aren't just going to redesign and retool for free."
One might think that they're already redesigning and retooling with *every* new phone, given that they all have different cables?
I am not left-handed, either!
Now in europe please, oh and make sure they're all able to charge off of a sensible range of voltage and current and more importantly use the SAME USB socket, because let's face it there are twelve of those two.
If you don't risk failure you don't risk success.
WTF does that mean? I have an iPod aftermarket charger that plugs into the wall and accepts the iPod's standard USB cable. Is that what they mean? Because at the least that would mean I could use a cheap wallplug unit for all my phone regardless of what stupid unique connector they use on the phone end. Of course that means that USB cables will triple in price.
Otherwise if they mean that all phones have to be charged by a USB port to a computer alone that would make less than zero sense. Considering, as others here have pointed out, not all USB ports draw enough current, it doubly makes less than zero sense.
Instead (..-) we'll be able to cruise into Wal-Martz and ask for a "cell phone cable." "That'll be five dollars, please."
Most certainly. But there's definately printer & ink, razor & blades etc. pricing going on here, where they offer you a subsidized price they'll recover through accessories. If they can't count on profits later they need profits now, so expect phone prices to rise. But mostly it's cutthroat on the main item and recovery on all sorts of extras ("extended warranty" anyone?) so it's probably an improvement.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
the FREE MARKET
:)
Oligopolies are not "free market". The current situation produces the best result for the manufacturer
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
You pay through the nose for the non-standard charger when you have to replace it in a few years, generally between 30 and 50 dollars for a part with a materials cost of at most a dollar.
You pay for it in phones that get thrown out because the non-standard charger tax in a few years makes it more feasable to dump the phone than replace the hideously unstandard wall-wart. Hence, more landfill costs, more materials costs, and a depressed to non-existant secondary market.
You pay for it in electricity, in the trickle costs of the many, many different chargers plugged in but idle in any given household.
You pay for it in brainspace, trying to keep everything clear in your head. Those times you fail to take the proper charger with you on a trip and you have to buy another one when you get there.
And on the other end of the spectrum, all of this is because the hardware companies want to bury hidden costs in the device to make a higher profit. There is no benefit to the end consumer at all. The manufacturers are just trying to raise the barrier of entry of selling replacement parts to keep those prices artifically high.
Well, guess what? The consumer does have a voice in making things fair. It's called the government. That's why you elect them. It doesn't always work, but that's what it's for. And in this case, the free market has had years to fix the problem, and it has only gotten worse. The amount of cheering on this thread is evidence of the animosity towards this purely profit-taking process.
This is people, seeing a problem and taking an action to improve the end-consumer experience and reduce overall costs. And good for them. It's nice to see a government that isn't kow-towing to every exploitive commercial process within its borders.
The ______ Agenda
The free market has failed us for twenty years on this one. The free market says: buy a proprietary cable, or don't buy at all.
The free market dictates that nothing works together, so that the businesses maximize profit. This is an automatic collusion. Smith said that no two businessmen ever met that didn't immediately collude to fix their market; he might have added that some markets require no actual collusion, that some exploitation is just obvious.
This is one of the reasons we have governments. It's also why we don't have dozens of different power companies and dozens of power connectors in our home.
Present businesses have failed us, so now some other nation's government will step in and impose some order, as we are ideologically incapable. Profits will diminish for the manufacturers, but spending power will increase for the consumer, the Broken Window fallacy refuted.
This is the second example, but certainly not the last, where China has set a defacto standard for us. Here's what they did with DVD formats.
When a country owns all your manufacturing capacity, you can't really tell them no. Who else is going to make stuff for you? Plus we owe them billions on the trade deficit.
And this is only the warm up act. DVD formats and cables, little stuff. Wait until we start rolling over on the big stuff! ROFL! Maybe we'll wake up to obvious one of these days.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
We have 4 laptops and, I think, 7 types of laptop chargers in our household. Wouldn't it be nice if the laptop chargers were all the same?
I would agree with this if I got a free car charger also. Every time I buy a phone, I have to spend the extra $30 - $50 for this accessory.
Getting extra batteries to charge during the occasions that I am home would be an option I guess, but those are even more non-standard and expensive.
My last option is just suck it up and stay locked in to a single vendor, until that vendor decides to again change all the charger ports, no matter how inferior the product becomes.
Creating a standard pin and having a built in cost of a few pennies per phone seems to be the best option on the table.