Well, that was quick. This morning at the GSMA Mobile World Congress conference taking place in Barcelona, a mammoth pile of cell phone manufacturers have agreed to a universal cell phone charger standard. That format? Micro USB (pictured).
Only days ago, the European Union announced it would be pursuing stronger means of forcing cell phone makers to get together on a charging standard that would work across a range of different handsets. The target for transition to micro USB -- which is smaller than the more commonly used mini USB connector but has already been adopted in a few handsets, including the BlackBerry Storm -- is to have "the majority of all new mobile phone models" supporting the new connector by January 1, 2012. As well, the chargers are set to be designed to use half as much power while operating on standby.

The big savings for manufacturers and buyers will come in the sheer number of chargers that will no longer have to be bundled with handsets: The use of a standard format is predicted to result in a 50 percent reduction in the number of chargers that have to be produced and sold each year. That's significant.

The list of companies immediately signing on to the initiative reads like a who's who in the GSM cell phone space -- LG, Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, AT&T, T-Mobile, Motorola -- but lacks a few key players, notably Apple, which is holding on to the legacy iPod connector with a veritable death grip. RIM and Palm are also both missing from the initial list of supporters. Whether the holdouts join on the alliance is anybody's guess.