O2's greener phone charger scheme a success
Monday, January 21, 2013 - 10:53:28
Ever since mobile phones became mass market products, people have been upgrading to a new handset every couple of years and thus accumulating yet another new A/C adaptor to keep their handset charged up.
In the past this was entirely necessary, because most manufacturers had their own proprietary ports into which no other brand of charger would fit.
Then the various companies (excluding Apple) came to an agreement, which saw Micro USB become the standard charging input that can be found on almost all modern smartphones.
However, manufacturers continued to bundle chargers with new phones, in spite of the fact that most people in the UK already have several perfectly serviceable cables to get the job done at home.
In fact, experts estimate that there are about 100 million chargers sitting unused in households across the UK, with the pile getting bigger, as more smartphones are purchased.
O2 initiated a scheme to tackle this problem back in 2012 and it has recently revealed the results. It sold the HTC One X+ to customers without a charger onboard, offering to let them buy one if required.
O2 had been hoping that about 70 per cent of buyers would not be fussed by the lack of a charger, but at the end of the experiment, it found that in fact, 82 per cent were satisfied with this setup.
This is very positive, since it means that networks and consumers can save money and packaging which would normally be required for chargers, while the environmental benefits will also be significant.
O2 CEO, Ronan Dunne, said that the scheme found that consumers are convinced of both the environmental and convenience-oriented benefits of the charger-free approach to mobile retail. He confirmed that his network would be ditching chargers completely by 2015.
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