Europeans realize dream of single charger for all cellphones
Cellphone battery dead? No problem: Just borrow a charger from a friend. Oh, wait — you can’t, because your friend doesn’t have the same phone as you, and his charger won’t work with your phone.
That annoyance will end next year, for Europeans at least. Thanks to the efforts of the European Commission, most cellphones sold in
Americans will have to wait. Without a government agency setting a deadline, it’s up to handset makers to make the switch to a single standard. All consumers can do is let their old chargers gather dust in a drawer, while hoping manufacturers will eventually converge on a standardized charger.
“For the FCC, this is probably number 5,000 on their list and it is legislative priority number 10,000 at this point,” says Joe Banos, chief operating officer for Wilson Electronics, which makes cellphone boosters and antennas. “We believe the
Today each cellphone ships with its own charger. Different companies use different connectors—and often different models from the same company do too, making it difficult for users to borrow a charger. And when it’s time to toss the phone, the charger also goes into the bin.
A universal charger means consumers don’t have to get a new charger with every mobile phone. As a bonus, it’ll be easier to borrow a charger when in need.
And if all that isn’t enough, there’s the green aspect. One-size-fits-all means fewer chargers will wind up in the landfill, less electronic waste, and fewer resources consumed in manufacturing chargers.
In 2009, the European Commission said it reached a voluntary agreement with handset manufacturers to use the micro-USB connector for the charger. Starting in 2011, all phone models sold in
Changing the rules in the US
Smartphone makers in the “For the most part it is already happening here with smartphones,” says Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at the Altimeter Group. “An HTC Evo charger will charge a Nexus One or Incredible, as long as it has a micro-USB connector.”
The major holdouts in the
But even among companies that use micro-USB, it’s still not a standard.
“There’s the flat, wide mini-USB connector; the short, squat micro-USB; and different versions in between,” says Allen Nogee, an analyst at In-Stat research. “They are all still using different versions of the USB connector.”
But if you can get a connector to fit into the phone, it doesn’t matter which model it is for or which company made it, because all USB-based chargers deliver the same voltage, say experts.
The push to change the situation in the
“It is much more expensive for these companies to support different phones and connectors,” says Nogee. “But the problem is that so far, accessories makers haven’t had enough say in the phone manufacturing process.”
Ultimately, economics will force handset makers in the
It’s not clear how Apple will make the change, but it is certain that if the company moves to a micro USB-based connector for its new iPhone model in
“It makes so much sense that I believe the
Google buys Slide, makes social network splash
The deal marks the latest try for the search giant to make some headway into the world of social networking. So far, Google has mostly failed in its attempts, including the poorly received Orkut and Google Buzz. Though the terms weren't disclosed, various new reports have put the value at between $180 million and $230 million.
"As the Slide team joins Google, we'll be investing even more to make Google services socially aware and expand these capabilities for our users across the Web," said David Glazer, Google's engineering director, in a company blog post.
With Slide, Google is scooping up a developer with an already well-established presence on Facebook, MySpace and other networks. Slide makes a number of popular social games like SuperPoke! Pets, Rock Riot, Top Friends and FunSpace.
The company once had the most popular apps on Facebook, but it has slid significantly in the past two years. Slide still has 15 million active users, but among its developer rivals that user base is only the 14th largest, according to AppData.com.
Launched in 2005 by PayPal co-founder Max Levchin, Slide originally only offered a photo-sharing software that allows users to create picture slide shows. Levchin sold PayPal for $1.5 billion, but he had even bigger expectations for Slide: If he sold it for $1.5 billion like Paypal, Levchin told Bloomberg in 2007, he "would regard it as abject failure."
Google's announcement comes several weeks after Google also made an investment in social app leader Zynga, reportedly worth $150 million. Zynga has a user base of 268 million, five times the nearest competitor.
At the Techonomy conference in
"We've always believed that our products would be better with more social signals," Schmidt said. "There's example after example how having access to a robust social graph that's reasonably well-curated can improve the quality of the services of what Google does."
But Schmidt insisted that, "We're not trying to do what Facebook does." He said social networking could help Google improve its search results to better understand the context of a user's query, and e-mail spam would improve if it knew what a user and his or her friends thought was valuable.
Slide is likely just a small part of that strategy, but perhaps a profitable one. Users can download Slide's apps for free, but some decorations and virtual gifts cost money. Venture capitalists have taken notice, and In January 2008, Slide took in $50 million in a funding round.
