India Joins EU in Mandating USB

India will require mobile devices in the country to have the USB Type-C standard charging port by March 2025, Business Standard reported.

The Bureau of Indian Standards is setting standards for two common types of chargers — one for mobile devices and possibly another one for wearable electronics, like smartwatches, Rohit Kumar Singh, secretary to the Ministry of Consumer Affairs said.

The Ministry of Environment may look at the impact of having a common charger for electronics on e-waste, Business Standard reported.

The requirement follows suit of the European Union, which set a December 28, 2024, deadline for all smartphones sold in member states to have the USB-C charging port.

"There is a broad consensus among the industry and government that the use of USB type C charging ports can be made mandatory after six months of the European Union's rolling out of standards for USB charging ports in 2024 as electronic manufacturers have a global integrated supply chain," Singh told Business Standard.

In 2019, India knocked the US out of second place for the largest market for smartphones because of the expansion of Chinese smartphone brands. Androids have an almost 96% share of the mobile devices market in India, while Apple is in second place with 3.1% of the market share.

Apple is reluctant to ditch its proprietary Lightning charging port, which is on all of its iPhones and some iPads. But the company confirmed that it will make iPhones with a USB-C port to comply with EU laws.

The company doesn't seem too thrilled about it. Greg Joswiak, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide marketing, said it will "obviously" be forced "to comply" with the new law, at The Wall Street Journal's Tech Live conference. He added that Apple "doesn't mind governments telling us what they want to accomplish," but that Apple's engineers are "pretty smart" and have figured out better ways to accomplish things before.

For example, Joswiak said, Apple created the industry standard for hearing aids made for iPhone after the US government's regulation for hearing aid compatibility with mobile phones didn't work.

The European Parliament said in June that the standard charging port legislation is "part of a broader EU effort to make products in the EU more sustainable, to reduce electronic waste, and make consumers' lives easier."

According to the European Parliament, chargers that are thrown away make up 11,000 tons of e-waste each year, and it believes having a standard charger will help EU consumers save up to 250 million euros a year from having to buy more chargers.

Apple holds the largest share of the US smartphone market, taking up 48% of the market share in the second quarter of 2022. Samsung is next, with 30% of the market share in the same quarter, and Lenovo is third with 9% of the market share. Samsung and Lenovo smartphones mostly use USB-C or MicroUSB chargers.

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