— This is the script of CNBC's news report for China's CCTV on January 17, 2020, Friday.
The EU commission's proposal is understood by many consumers, one of the motivations is to improve the versatility and convenience of mobile phone. You've probably all had the experience in your life of not being able to borrow a charging port between an IPHONE and an Android phone. Efforts to harmonize standards have been made by regulators and within the industry.
In 2009, Apple, Samsung, Huawei, Nokia and other mainstream mobile phone manufacturers signed a memorandum and agreed to standardize the mobile phone charging interface. Now there are 3 kinds of USB, but still inconvenient. At present, the smart phone interface is mainly divided into two categories, one is the Lightning, or Lightning interface unique to apple's iPhone, and the other is for android phones. Among that, USB-C is one of the most popular one in the market and it is also the type that EU regulators want to use uniformly.
Mobile phone interface is not uniform, also brought a lot of waste of resources. It is estimated that obsolete cable products generate more than 50,000 tons of e-waste per year. the European commission has repeatedly proposed a unified interface, although previously it was voluntary, but more recently there have been calls for enforcement, which could force apple to abandon the lightning interface. But apple has resisted, arguing that forcing all smartphones to use the same interface is a deterrent to innovation, and it's bad for the market and bad for consumers, in addition to the creative considerations, unifying interfaces also impact Apple's revenue.
Because of some unique designs, apple can make a lot of money from related accessories, such as charging cables. In the past 13 years, apple has made two major changes to the phone's interface, every time it changes, we hear some complaint like "apple is going to steal money again", however, apple has also used a usb-c interface on its latest iPad Pro, in the face of growing regulatory requirements and industry trends. So it's unclear whether apple is prepared for potential regulatory changes.
More importantly, the era of wireless charging has arrived, Apple and other competitors have launched wireless charging products, and some analysts expect Apple to abandon the charging interface entirely. We'll keep an eye on that