An international movement to replace the iPhone’s ‘Lightning port’ with a ‘USB-C’ type is on the rise. Following the EU (European Union), the United States is also joining the ranks of standardization of mobile chargers.
According to The Verge on the 19th, U.S. Democrats including Elizabeth Warren delivered a letter to the Department of Commerce the day before urging the introduction of an integrated standard for mobile chargers.
The letter pointed out that proprietary commercial chargers such as Apple’s Lightning Port generate e-waste, which in turn puts a burden on consumers to upgrade their devices.
The move by the US Senate came just a week after the European Parliament passed a bill to standardize chargers.
Earlier on the 7th, the EU also decided to unify the charging ports of smartphones, tablets, and cameras to USB-C. Accordingly, the European Commission (EC) will have to apply the USB-C method from 2024 after finalizing the law this year.
Apple has been opposed to the EU since 2011 when it first pushed for the standardization of mobile device chargers. Apple insisted that the forced conversion to USB-C could adversely affect the environment. This is because all Lightning ports that have been distributed so far must be discarded.
Meanwhile, Ming-Chi Kuo, an analyst familiar with Apple news, and Mark Gurman, a Bloomberg news agency, mentioned that Apple has already started developing an iPhone that uses the USB-C type. If this is true, the ‘iPhone 15’ to be released next year will be the first iPhone to which USB-C type is applied.
