In a bid to minimize the size of electronic or e-waste generated per house, the Indian government has directed all phone manufacturers selling their smartphones in the country to adopt the USB Type-C port as the standard port for charging electronic products.
The deadline for making this compulsory shift has been set as March 2025.
This means that by March 2025, smartphone manufacturers will have to shift to providing Type-C type charging ports for all of their products sold in India.
At present, more than 98% Android smartphones being sold in India use a USB Type-C as the charging port. However, the flagship smartphone of the US tech giant Apple Inc, the revered iPhones do not support the said ports for charging. Instead they come with the proprietary Lightning port.
“The objective is to reduce the number of chargers per household thereby, minimising the amount of e-waste generated,” said the Secretary of Consumer Affairs, Rohit Kumar Singh to ET.
He added that there is a global supply chain at play when it comes to chargers, as a result of which, India will have to align itself with the global timeline.
It is important to add that India is not the first country to have come up with an initiative of the sort.
The European Union (EU) came up with a directive like this first, and has already set a deadline for all the device manufacturers to comply with the common USB Type-C wired charging standard directive by 2024.
The EU has provided a much more stringent deadline for compliance with the directive, with the exact date set as December 28, 2024.
The mandate in India will come three months after the EU’s course of action. “In India the directive will kick in three months after the European Union,” said Rohit Kumar Singh.
The Indian government has reportedly also formed a sub-group for the examination of feasibility of uniform charging ports for wearables, and has set 2026 as the deadline for laptop manufacturers to make the desired changes to the charging ports.
