It seems that USB-C iPhones are on the horizon. There’s a high chance that the rest of the accessories that still uses Lightning port will get updated with USB-C port. I do have have the MagSafe Battery Pack and Duo Travel Charger. Having them all in USB-C seems like a breeze as you don’t need to bring Lightning cable anymore but the transition would be expensive. Anyone replacing all their Lightning accessories once they got updated?
You think Apple will make the change everywhere else in the world too or just EU?
The logistical cost to have separate connectors in two different markets would hit the multi-million dollar range. The financial benefit to Apple of not adopting USB-C in any given market cannot be that significant. It comes down to accessory license fees. Apple is losing that market with losing Lightning, but Apple’s image would take a hit from bisecting their connector across markets (“It just works” being their reputation and all — any unnecessary complexity harms that).
It’s really hard to imagine it being worth it to Apple to make USB-C an EU-only thing. I don’t know all the numbers, so I’m not going to say impossible. I would be very surprised though.
And US models have a different chassis to remove the SIM card.
Not saying they will do this, but they obviously don’t care about region specific models.
I can’t see why they’d insist on keeping Lightning just for a few regions and not others. They’d end up losing way more money in supply line and accessory fragmentation than they’d gain in extra residuals from Lightning.
Modern USB is also just a better product. Flexible power delivery, significantly faster transfer speeds, multiple protocols over same connection, etc.
Apple will probably slowly use these for pro model upsells.