GSM Association just announced a standardized charger for all mobile phones. Consumers have been demanding this for a while now. But before we all get excited, the target date for this is Jan. 1, 2012 – 3 years away!

This makes perfect sense and I would imagine that this would have been introduced a lot sooner as there are obvious advantages to both consumers and manufacturers. This new charger should also be a bit more energy efficient. There are 17 companies involved in this, including AT&T Inc., Motorola Inc., Qualcomm Inc., Samsung Electronics. T-Mobile.

I instantly noticed that two of the major players are not involved in this initiative: Apple and RIM.
Apple iPhone doesn’t surprise me as their adapter comes from the iPod ecosystem. RIM devices already use a standard MiniUSB adapter. Manufacturers of mobile phones, and most of them will be “smart phones” should embrace the miniUSB form factor.

MiniUSB is already widely used for small devices such as PDAs, digital cameras and mobile phones. Since most of my friends have a Blackberry, even though each one is a different flavor or carrier there never a shortage of charging stations, even when you visit a home of someone who doesn’t have one. A computer or even a Playstation 3 guarantees that there is a source of energy anywhere you go (assuming they have a miniUSB cable which most do). Additionally the miniUSB acts as a universal syncing cable. If other manufacturers followed this lead, the wait would not have to be 3 years.