It’s a bad idea for the EU to force Apple to dump iPhone’s Lightning port

Apple disagrees with the European Union’s idea that forcing manufacturers to include a standard charging port for smartphones would be good for the environment, users, or device makers. It’d be a lose-lose-lose situation for the EU to force Apple to dump iPhone’s Lightning port.

Liam Tung for CNET:

EU politicians earlier this month outlined plans to introduce stricter regulations to make smartphone makers conform in offering a standard connector, with the main objective of reducing tons of waste in tech accessories…

“We believe regulation that forces conformity across the type of connector built into all smartphones stifles innovation rather than encouraging it, and would harm consumers in Europe and the economy as a whole,” Apple said in a statement to Reuters. “We hope the (European) Commission will continue to seek a solution that does not restrict the industry’s ability to innovate,” it said.

More than one billion Apple devices have shipped using a Lightning connector in addition to an entire ecosystem of accessory and device manufacturers who use Lightning to serve our collective customers. Legislation would have a direct negative impact by disrupting the hundreds of millions of active devices and accessories used by our European customers and even more Apple customers worldwide, creating an unprecedented volume of electronic waste and greatly inconveniencing users. — Apple Inc.

Apple’s new statement follows a study it commissioned from Danish economist consultancy Copenhagen Economics, which concludes that a European common charger law would cost consumers far more than any environmental benefits it could deliver. “The consumer harm from a regulatory-mandated single connector type (at least €1.5bn) [$1.66bn] significantly outweighs any associated environmental benefits (€13m) [$14.3m],” wrote Copenhagen Economics.

MacDailyNews Take: Again, if the EU had passed such a law when this was initially proposed, we’d all be stuck with MicroUSB today.

By the time the EU gets around to making a law mandating a common phone charger (it was proposed back in 2014 and it’ll still take many more years, if they ever even get there), Apple’s iPhones and iPads won’t have any ports at all. As it stands even today, the Lightning port on our iPhones is largely superfluous.