Is Apple about to what it said it never would, and give up on its rather exclusive charging port standard for one of the most popular streaming devices of all, the iPhone?
According to influential tech analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple will abandon its decade-long fixation on the Lightning port in favor of the more popularly used USB-C standard starting with its 2023 iPhones.
Via an unspecified survey, Kuo said USB-C “could improve iPhone’s transfer and charging speed in hardware designs, but the final spec details still depend on iOS support.”
Apple has long favored the somewhat exclusive Lightning standard because it allows more streamlined product design and offers better waterproofing capabilities.
But Apple has faced pressure from entities like the European Union, which would like to see iPhones adopt the same charging cable standard the vast majority of the global smartphone market uses. This would cut down on electronic waste, the EU contends.
For its part, Apple has said that suddenly switching all its phones to USB-C would generate more e-waste, not less. And it has been widely assumed that Apple will abandon Lightning when it takes its iPhones portless, relying on wireless charging and data transfer.
But as The Verge, which first reported on Kuo's tweet, noted, Apple has come around a bit lately, integrating USB-C in its most recent iPads.
