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Mobiles will share a common charging socket design by 2012, according to an announcement at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The GSM Association and 17 phone companies are collaborating in the initiative.
"It will ensure that the mobile industry adopts a common format for mobile phone charger connections, and adopts energy-efficient chargers resulting in an estimated 50 per cent reduction in stand-by energy consumption and the potential elimination of up to 51,000 tonnes of duplicate chargers," said the GSMA, explaining: "an estimated 1.2 billion mobile phones were sold in 2008, of which between 50-80% were replacement handsets. That equals between 51,000 and 82,000 tonnes of replacement chargers every year."
Micro USB has been selected as the universal charging interface.
"The group agreed that by the 1st January 2012, the majority of all new mobile phone models available will support a universal charging connector and the majority of chargers shipped will meet the efficiency targets set out by the OMTP," said GSMA.
OMTP (Open Mobile Terminal Platform) is the industry body that developed the technical requirements behind the universal charging socket.
The initial group of companies are: 3 Group, AT&T, KTF, LG, mobilkom austria, Motorola, Nokia, Orange, Qualcomm, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, Telenor, Telstra, T-Mobile and Vodafone