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One cable for everyone

Jalal Official (royalthree) on January 15, 2022
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The new regulation is good for the environment and convenient for consumers : nevertheless, it is a mistake that the EU Commission wants to force standard Ladekabel Smartphone and tablets by law . On Thursday, the Brussels authority presented the relevant draft directive. According to this, only smartphones, tablets, cameras or game consoles that are charged with USB-C cables may be sold in the future. This connection is anyway the most common in mobile phones. Only the US company Apple uses its own standard called Lightning for smartphones. But that will soon be over.

The law, which the EU Parliament and Council of Ministers still have to approve, is intended to put an end to annoying trouble with cables. If you forgot your charger at home while on holiday, you can simply use that of friends. In addition, it should always be possible to buy new smartphones in the future without a charger included. The Commission's hope is that if you already have a suitable charger in your drawer, you'll just buy the phone. This saves consumers money and reduces the consumption of raw materials and mountains of electronic waste.

 

Apple has to change the design of its devices against its will

 

This means a little less sales for the manufacturers, but they will be able to cope with that. The only big loser, it seems, is Apple . The Californians have to change the technology and design of their cell phones and tablets against their will, probably worldwide; after all, it would be too expensive to produce one version for Europe and one for the rest of the world. But a billionaire company like Apple will be fine with that.

Despite the nice benefits and manageable burdens, the Commission should have waived the law. Because the establishment of USB-C as a de facto probably worldwide standard can hinder innovations. Apple could make great improvements to the Lightning model, or maybe another manufacturer would come up with a superior third standard. That will no longer happen because the authority decided on September 23, 2021 that the future is called USB-C.

Does this step perhaps only serve to cultivate the image of Brussels?

 

In addition, this law is a very harsh encroachment on economic freedom - for a rather small problem. The industry has already reduced the number of charging cable types from 30 to three and soon only two within ten years through voluntary commitments. The third surviving standard, Micro-USB, is being phased out. So consumers have a lot less trouble than they used to. And if the level of suffering were really that great, customers could simply punish the Apple group for going its own way: by preferring to buy a smartphone from Samsung or another rival. That way the market would make its judgement.

But the Commission does not trust the judgment of the market. Instead, it relies on dirigisme and detailed specifications from the very top. This is a worrying signal for an authority that has a say in Europe's economic policy. In addition, the suspicion arises that the Commission also devised the law for the sake of image cultivation: the EU is abstract and complicated; so it's good to keep showing the public what concrete advantages Brussels brings. But the EU has no need of such clumsy advertising.

 




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