[throwaway50606]

EU is the second largest market in the world. Of course everything is going to be made in a way that's sellable in the EU.

> Also, you are not banned from engineering other solutions. The police isn't going to knock on the doors of engineers who are suspected to develop better charging cables :)

We are discussing under an article where the regulator has sent a "stern warning" to a company. I don't think what you're saying makes sense. If I tried to sell my better plug in my home market, the police would come knocking.

[ghaff]

You mean like how EU-compatible AC plugs/voltages are sold everywhere else in the world? Of course, manufacturers can have different versions of things for different geos--or just not sell in the EU if it's not profitable to do so (which presumably won't be the case with the iPhone).

[throwaway50606]

EU exists 10% of the time the electrical plugs existed and were regulated in the respective countries.

We are talking about new innovations, not something used for 100 years.

[anigbrowl]

No they wouldn't, because you are not a giant corporation like Apple. Stop assuming your scrappy little startup and a trillion-$ corporation with massive market share have similar interests, this is like an ant worrying about a fence designed to block elephants.

In reality if you come up with some kind of better plug, you will sell to a specialist market that would recognize the benefits (dentists or musicians for example) and then expand into other markets. You could try selling direct to consumers but guess what, nobody would buy it unless it had connectivity with other devices, and manufacturers wouldn't go out of their way to adopt it unless it delivered overwhelming advantages at low additional cost.

[mrtksn]

Not necessarily. If you come up with such a superior plug, you can easily have it sold on the 1st largest market in the world.

Not everything has to be sold in EU, there are plenty of things not available across all markets.

[throwaway50606]

No, I can't. I need to sell it on both markets to make it profitable. There's no way to have that large margins it could sell just in the US.