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Industrial progress, till not long ago, meant mainly innovating to bring new products that gave customers something new. Think of automatic versus manual gear shift in cars, for instance. While new product innovation thrives and will continue to do so, there’s also focus on innovation that eliminates the wasteful or simplifies life for consumers.
Take something as simple as the act of charging an electronic device, something we do every day and often for multiple devices. Laptops come with different charging cables, with varying types even within the same company. Android and Apple cables don’t work on each other’s devices. Android phones themselves evolved from pins to the sometimes infuriating works-only-god-knows-which-side up B-type charger now to the easy-to-understand c-type cable. Even then, the c-type charger still does not work as well across brands.
Apple users, of course, may be smiling as Steve Jobs made it impossible to get it wrong. But forget their charger home on a train journey or while at work, and you can spot them desperately trying to find the Apple user—only around five in hundred mobile phones sold in 2022 was an Apple--asking if someone has a compatible charger.
Charging devices is about to enter a new era in a development that seems small but really is not. News reports indicate that India is headed for a uniform charging system for laptops, mobiles and even tablets, using the C-type pins. India is following the European Union in promoting this shift, and industry organisations appear to have agreed to the government’s request. Uniform charging for wearables is also on the cards, but that’s been assigned to a sub-group according to the news report. Will Apple fall in line, however? Apple has agreed to do so in the EU to comply with the revised directive, so there’s no reason for it to not comply in India. A key question that remains is if India will codify this requirement or rely on verbal persuasion to get industry to adopt.
It’s a move that makes life easy for consumers, by allowing inter-operability within multiple devices, and lowering the need for multiple chargers thereby lowering e-waste and demand for raw materials such as plastics and metals. Embarrassing images of a drawer or a bag in every household with a mess of old chargers and cables of varying vintage may become a thing of the past, eventually.
Interoperability is something that is appearing in different fields and deserves to be promoted by governments and regulators. In some ways, it’s an intermediation of sorts but one that simplifies life. If cars can fuel up at any pump should not electric vehicles be chargeable anywhere? But still, companies promote their own charging mechanisms, for instance using fast charging as an incentive. But charging infrastructure will be more efficient if it’s interoperable. Think ONDC for e-commerce, where a common protocol is used to give customers more choice? DTH was supposed to be interoperable on paper but in reality that has not been the case. Portability of insurance policies has been a boon for general insurance customers, as they can shift out to companies offering policies with more favourable terms.
A walled eco-system suits companies but for consumers it’s a pain. Moving to C-type chargers may seem like a small step in the overall scheme of things, but it’s a move that can make life simpler for companies and consumers in the longer run.
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Ravi Ananthanarayanan Moneycontrol Pro
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