In many battery powered applications for instance, such as mobile phones, PDA’s etc compliance is not required and using fuses that comply with American UL requirements is widely accepted.

In effect this means that when selecting a UL certified fuse you need to bear in mind that you should not continuously load it above around 75% capacity to ensure long term reliability. In contrast European IEC standards tend to require a fuse to withstand 100% rated current at room temperature indefinitely. This is one of those historical important points that is often unknown to engineers as they no longer tend to open up a fuse manufacturer catalog and see important information like this in the front, but instead search directly to fuse data sheets on the web where this 100% load issue is typically not made clear.