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India follows EU's example in requiring USB-C charging for smart devices

theregister.com

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Re: India follows EU's example in requiring USB-C charging for smart devices

#211

Post by londons_explore »

playingalong wrote: post #42
londons_explore wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real solution is to not legislate a standard, but instead to say: "A 10% additional tax shall apply to the sale of any portable device. The tax will be reduced to zero if the device uses the most common charging port in the year the device was sold. The tax is reduced to 5% if it uses the 2nd most common port in the year it was sold." That means any big industry effort to move to a new port will, when it gets mor…

This assumes any vendor can use any port. But that's not true. Is it? Can Samsung adopt Lightning if they wanted to?

No, but then it's in samsung's best interests to use another standard and work to make it common enough that they pay the reduced rate of tax.

Even USB-C has licensing fees - although they are insignificant for most companies.

Re: India follows EU's example in requiring USB-C charging for smart devices

#212

Post by mlindner »

crote wrote: post #76
mlindner wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Industry progress" doesn't happen if companies are banned from selling new devices with new standards.

Selling devices with both connectors is allowed. Besides that, there are plenty of industry standards developed well before the first devices come on the market. PCIe 6 was finished before the first PCIe 5 product even hit the shelves, DDR5 was done two years before the first CPU used it, and I bet someone is working on a USB 5 already.

> Selling devices with both connectors is allowed.

Unless by doing so you harm the competitiveness of the device. Additionally if a device still has USB-C no one's going to design peripherals for a device and artificially limit their market if they don't have to. This makes moving to new standards difficult or impossible.

Re: India follows EU's example in requiring USB-C charging for smart devices

#213

Post by realgeniushere »

piva00 wrote: post #195
realgeniushere wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment misses the point of the entire discussion. No one has even claimed that Apple was merely slow. It was pure profit motive.

How do you suggest to have some control over pure profit motives then?

By eventually doing what the EU is doing when there’s a clear hold out. But instead of carving it in stone, letting it expire in 5 to 10 years. i.e. exactly what my original comment said.

Re: India follows EU's example in requiring USB-C charging for smart devices

#214

Post by realgeniushere »

Someone wrote: post #204
realgeniushere wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because anyone with experience with the political process knows it’s an absolute nightmare and prone to being extremely slow to react to changes.

Outside wartime, being slow is an advantage. It means citizens can trust rules won’t be changed rapidly, increasing trust in the government. If properly taxes often change citizens wouldn’t know whether they can afford to buy a house, for example, or whether they be able to pay for their kids to go to school. I think the EU is a great example of politics that’s slow, but not too slow, and not a nightmare. Yes, this t…

Slow is good for deciding to prohibit. Slow is bad for deciding to allow.

Re: India follows EU's example in requiring USB-C charging for smart devices

#215

Post by realgeniushere »

Havoc wrote: post #181
realgeniushere wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay but that doesn’t address my point or defend yours.

Mostly because I can’t tell what you’re trying to say

My whole point is that this requirement could suffocate innovation on ports by turning it into a mother-may-I regime in perpetuity. You said, but we had the regime before with micro usb yet still innovated to usb-c. My response was that the old requirement didn’t stifle innovation since it was satisfied by an adapter [requiring a minor logical step by the reader:] because you could still invent new ports as long as you bundled a micro USB adapter. Your response was, adapters bad. Do you see how that doesn’t address the argument at all?

Re: India follows EU's example in requiring USB-C charging for smart devices

#217

Post by Rexxar »

constantcrying wrote: post #197
anony999 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe today's iphones are larger than the first iphones. Am I wrong? Not to mention the Samsung high-end stuff.

What are you even debating here? You said phones get larger every year, they really do not. Although in the past smaller phones have been more common. There is no contradiction. This also misses the point entirely. The point being, the number of ports decreases the volume available for everything else.

Look at the size of the 3 first iPhone generations for example.

Re: India follows EU's example in requiring USB-C charging for smart devices

#218

Post by victorvosk »

dmitriid wrote: post #113
victorvosk wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because legislatures are incredibly short sighted and ignorant when it comes to technology. ("Would you like to accept cookies on this site you chose to visit, if not it won't work and you should probably leave")

> Would you like to accept cookies on this site you chose to visit, if not it won't work and you should probably leave") Literally not what the law says.

I wasn't attempting to be literal. The observed effect "in the wild" though is pretty obvious, and the overall experience of the internet is worse off for it.

Re: India follows EU's example in requiring USB-C charging for smart devices

#219

Post by Eddy_Viscosity2 »

speleding wrote: post #185
MagnumOpus wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ripping every single plug socket and outlet out in 80% of the living spaces in the EU is neither cheap nor popular, so "industry asking for it" will not be enough. Your comparison is a bad one.

The parent suggests that bureaucrats could simply change this unified charging port after a while. By that time there will be just as many USB-C ports as there are 230V outlets. Most of Europe already has a standard 230V plug ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schuko ). It would probably be easier to get a unified 230V power plug than to change the USB-C port again after a decade.

The life cycle of cell phones is a bit less than for buildings and nearly all of the electrical devices that plug into them - the primary exception being rechargable electronic devices. So changing the charging port standard is WAY different than changing the outlet standard.

Re: India follows EU's example in requiring USB-C charging for smart devices

#220

Post by DocTomoe »

PartiallyTyped wrote: post #96
DocTomoe wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With this kind of legislation, why would anyone invest in creating a connector they cannot market? This pretty much enforces an "end of history" kind of USB-c connector standard. I can see things moving more to the wireless realm (Qi for loading, WiFi/Bluetooth/LoRa for data) after this.

EU's legislation is only for battery charged mobile devices and accessories, not laptops or anything beyond tablets. EU also considers every few years different connectors.

What connectors will the EU consider if no-one is willing to invest money to create them?
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