Under the agreement, all new phones announced from today for sale in the EU will have a standard micro-USB socket for charging the device.

The companies who have signed up to the measure, which is intended to reduce the number of chargers sold and discarded in Europe include Apple, Nokia, Qualcomm, HTC, RIM, LG, Motorola and Samsung.

It will be interesting to see how this impacts on Apple’s next iPhone as these phones have always carried proprietary hardware interfaces.  Will the next iPhone switch entirely to micro-USB, will it have a micro-USB socket alongside the standard iPhone connector and will any change only affect handsets sold in the EU?

The move was initialised a year ago by the EU to try to reduce the overall carbon footprint and the amount of waste produced by the electronics industry and very quickly all the major manufacturers signed up.  It means that within a year or two mobile phone companies will begin to sell phones without chargers, instead expecting consumers to either buy one separately or use the existing charger that came with their previous handset.

Some manufacturers including HTC have already been using micro-USB sockets for charging their handsets for a couple of years, indeed I’m now on my second HTC phone with such a socket and charger.

How this is taken by consumers who may resent having to buy a separate charger, or who may went to sell or give away their old phone and charger remains to be seen.  The move is being broadly welcomed by governments across Europe however.

While the intention might have been good the whole suggestion was clearly aiming for troubles. Some questions that came up where about the web browsers that should be supplied with the operating system. Who would pick the ones that would be supplied, who would make the decision to not supply a web browser and why.

It seems though that the suggestion has backfired as Microsoft announced that they will not ship Windows 7 with a version of Internet Explorer in the European Union which in turn means that the operating system will ship without web browser at all. Veteran Internet users might be reminded of times back then when web browsers were supplied on floppy disks or CDs and this is apparently going to happen in 2009 again. History repeats itself so to say, at least in the EU.

The browser-less versions, dubbed Windows 7 “E”, will be distributed in all members of the European Economic Area as well as Croatia and Switzerland. In addition, Microsoft will strip the browser from the Europe-only “N” versions of Windows 7, which also removes the Windows Media Player from the operating system and is the result of another move by Europe’s antitrust authorities.

“Microsoft will not offer for distribution in the European territory the Windows 7 product versions that contain IE, which are intended for distribution in the rest of the world,” Microsoft said in the memo. “This will apply to both OEM and Retail versions of Windows 7 products.”

“To ensure that Microsoft is in compliance with European law, Microsoft will be releasing a separate version of Windows 7 for distribution in Europe that will not include Windows Internet Explorer,” the software maker said in the memo. “Microsoft will offer IE8 separately and free of charge and will make it easy and convenient for PC manufacturers to preinstall IE 8 on Windows 7 machines in Europe if they so choose. PC manufacturers may choose to install an alternative browser instead of IE 8, and has always been the case, they may install multiple browsers if they wish.”

via Cnet

This poses some interesting questions. Who decides which web browsers will be included? The list will probably include Firefox, the Google Browser, Safari and Opera. But what about other niche browsers? What if the makers of Lynx, Arachne or Sleipnir want their web browsers included as well? This opens Pandora’s Box and will confuse the average joe more than anything else. Many regular Windows users do not even know which version of the operating system they are running. How are they supposed to make a decision between 5, 10 or 20 of different web browsers that are included in the operating system?

How would the EU suggest to keep the web browsers up to date? They would lock out users without Internet connection if they would make the decision to download the web browser during installation. If the web browsers come bundled they might need an update immediately after installation. Not all web browsers perform automatic update installations though.

Experienced users on the other hand will not benefit from this proposal as well. One of the first tasks after installing an operating system is to download a web browser.

If they would force Microsoft into doing this they should also force the developers of other operating systems to do the same. Force Apple to include Internet Explorer as an alternative, force Linux distributions to display other web browsers as an option.

But there is another thing that needs to be discussed. Why stop with web browsers? What about developers of calculators, media players, task managers or text editors? Should not they have the same right of inclusion if the web browser developers get it?

It is without doubt true that Microsoft did use the power of their operating system to distribute Internet Explorer. Today a new web browser is only a few clicks away and the success of the Firefox web browser shows that it is possible to be successful even without being distributed with an operating system.

I personally think something should have been done back in the last century when Microsoft began distributing Internet Explorer with Windows. What’s your take on the issue?

“Considering that Microsoft continued to abuse its powerful market position after the Commission’s March 2004 decision requiring it to change its practices, and given the fact that it is already the third time in four years that the Commission had to impose fines or penalty payment for non-compliance with a Commission decision, and bearing in mind that the 17 September 2007 CFI judgment has the force of res judicata, does the Commission consider that Article 93 (b) and (c) of Financial Regulation, read in conjunction with article 45(2) of Directive 2004/18/EC could be applied to Microsoft in this particular case and with regard to any ongoing or future public procurement procedure? If it is the case, could we therefore consider that Microsoft does not fulfill the conditions to participate in such public
procurement procedure?”

The last two paragraphs have been directly taken from the form that was submitted to the European Commission, the pdf can be downloaded from this link. It will be very interesting to read the answer of the European Commission. My guess is that Microsoft will not be excluded from receiving EU contracts because if they would it would be like a digital revolution in Europe and a huge chance for Linux on the other hand.