Samsung launches $19.99 Power Sharing cable for charging micro USB devices with your Galaxy phone or tablet
Samsung today launched a new accessory for its Galaxy line of products that isn't just a gimmick but looks extremely useful: meet the Samsung Power Sharing cable for $19.99.
Context & Ripple Effects
The cable only works because of a decision seven years old: the micro-USB charging standard that let any phone charge off any cable turned the connector into commodity infrastructure. Samsung is now monetizing the other side of that standard — a $19.99 accessory that reverses the current, letting a Galaxy phone or tablet act as the charger.
The launch lands mid-ramp for the -adjacent Galaxy hardware cycle: the Note 4 was announced on September 3 alongside the Note Edge, and the Oculus-powered Gear VR was priced at $199 on September 6, so Samsung is selling accessories against its largest-battery flagship at the moment of peak attention. The story also traveled unusually far for an accessory — pickups ranged from 9to5Google and Android Central to Gigaom and Ubergizmo.
First-order effects
- Galaxy phone and tablet owners gain a way to top up micro USB devices — earbuds cases, e-readers, second phones — without carrying a dedicated battery pack, using the large batteries Samsung ships in its Note-class flagships.
Second-order effects
- Third-party accessory makers lose pricing headroom: when the device vendor itself sells the reverse-charging cable at $19.99, that becomes the reference price for the whole category, squeezing no-name imports that compete purely on cost.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the handset becomes the default power bank for its own peripheral ecosystem — connector standards like micro USB are what make that arbitrage possible, and vendors who control both ends of the cable capture the attach revenue.
The trend: Standardized charging connectors are letting handset makers convert their installed base into an accessory attach-revenue stream, with the phone recast as a charger for everything around it.