According to company analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple is planning to replace the proprietary Lightning port on its iPhones with the nearly universally embraced USB-C next year.
Kuo claimed in a pair of tweets that Apple would make the change in 2023, citing an unnamed “survey” (presumably of component manufacturers, from whom Kuo seems to get a lot of his information for predictions about future Apple products).
Adopting USB-C “could improve iPhone’s transfer and charging speed in hardware designs,” according to Kuo, “but the final spec details still depend on iOS support.”
Kuo’s prediction isn’t without precedent: for years, rumors and speculation have swirled about Apple adopting USB-C for the iPhone. The reversible USB-C standard has been embraced by the smartphone industry as a whole, and Apple has gotten on board in part, adding USB-C to its most recent iPads and using USB-C-compatible Thunderbolt ports on many Macs. The EU is still considering a proposal that would make USB-C ports mandatory on smartphones and other electronics, adding to the pressure to switch (with the intention of reducing e-waste by standardizing chargers and data cables).
Despite this, Apple has always seemed adamantly opposed to the idea. It’s been suggested that Apple would rather make its iPhones portless, relying on wireless charging and data transfer instead of introducing USB-C to its devices. Last year, Kuo himself predicted that Apple would not consider USB-C ports. He said in March 2021 that Apple planned to keep Lightning ports on iPhones for the “foreseeable future” — partly to keep the lucrative Made for iPhone (MFi) program afloat, and partly to improve waterproofing.
But it’s possible that Lightning has simply died. When Apple first announced the standard in September 2012, Phil Schiller described it as “a modern connector for the next decade,” according to MacRumors. It’s May 2022, and the decade is almost over.
