From: Ad 

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=40112

"THE PEOPLE'S Republic of China said it will begin enforcing a
universal standard of cell phone charger in the next month. As the
world+dog knows, the IT superpower, and of course the ROC called Taiwan are
responsible for a staggering percentage of overall IT production capacity.
In 2004, for example, they shipped over one third of all mobile phones in
the world, with that figure growing by 12 per cent in the next year.

While some manufacturers might grumble that the new policy will force them
to make changes to their phone designs, the Ministry of Information
Industry has taken the step to reduce the number of phone chargers that
have to be thrown away every year. With nearly 100 million mobile phones
being replaced in China every year, this potentially represents a big
reduction in e-waste, and is definitely a good thing."

"Many local Chinese companies such as Lenovo and Konka already have
compliant mobile phones, while Motorola and Sony-Ericsson already have some
phones in their range that are compliant with the USB standard. Other
manufactures have complained, however, that phone costs will rise as they
will no longer be able to ship the same model of phone to all countries.
Given the universal nature of USB, however, you'd expect that in the
long-term, people will benefit from this move"


Hurrah.....a great move. Hopefully this will spread to all other low power
devices so that a powered USB post can be used to charge a whole range of
things & so that we can all dispense with many many wall warts.


Adam

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