“Apple will be forced to fall in line with all the other smartphone manufacturers and provide a standard battery charger on its iPhone,” David Gilbert reports for IB Times.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple won’t be forced to to anything.
“Currently Apple uses proprietary ports on its iPhones for transferring data and charging the battery of its iPhone but following the agreement of a provisional deal by EU on Thursday, it will be forced to change its stance as soon as 2017,” Gilbert reports. “EU lawmakers agreed to the draft deal which states that all mobile phone manufacturers will need to sign up to a common standard for battery chargers which can fit any device, including smartphones.”
“The draft EU legislation could be voted on by the EU parliament as soon as March 2014, and if it passes this stage each member country will be given two years to transpose the legislation into national law, with manufacturers like Apple and Samsung given a further year to implement the changes, meaning 2017 is the earliest we will see the changes come into effect,” Gilbert reports. “The mobile phone market is obviously a global one, so the impact of any changes made in the EU will have much wider reaching effects, as manufacturers will be reticent to produce different versions of their phones for different markets.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: If, big IF (getting each member country to agree on anything can be like herding cats) it comes to it, Apple will simply slap an adapter in every box starting in 2017, if Apple devices still even require a wired charger by then.
There are too many advantages to controlling the primary connector tech – from the device design to accessory sales – that there’s no way Apple will relinquish it.
The iPhone 5/5c/5s would not exist as is without the Lightning Connector. Note to EU Lawmakers (not that they’ll listen): Having a common battery charger is not worth the loss of innovation that will result.
Let the rest of the device assemblers handicap themselves with some government-mandated lowest common denominator port, stuck with a certain size and shape for many years, long after better, smaller, faster ways have been invented. That mindset is anathema to Apple and any other true innovator.
