The companies what are capable of making a good quality copy of a charger (i.e one what is safe to use across the world) are the same ones what make the official chargers for the mobile firms. the phone companies concentrate on making phones and subcontract the manufacturer of the charger to another company. These usually have obscure Chinese names and turn out mains to low voltage DC chargers by the container load and specialise in these (rather than phones, cameras or anything else).
it is them who are also making the clones…
the phone manufacturers don’t like this, but they can’t really do anything about it. This is why as 1984 mentions some are talking about a universal charger anyway, I just wish they’d hurry up about it. as all gadgets would come with one charger anyway and most have enough battery time to last the day so the charger can normally be kept in one place, I don’t think that the replacement market is that large….
one other issue is you do not want these things to be too cheaply made, as they run on 230v mains electricity and could shock people or set on fire if not up to safety standards which is also why companies want control over who makes the chargers…
Then again its not exactly rocket science. we have after all standardised sizes of batteries, mains connectors (at least within a country), stuff like USB connectors, bluetooth (sort of!). I expect there will be one main pattern of charger soon (just as how most digital cameras use a SD card nowadays)
