Oliver Haslam·

Apple Must Switch All Product Range To USB-C By 2024 End After Recent EU Voting

The European Parliament has now brought Apple’s switch from Lightning to the USB-C standard a step closer.

The EU Parliament voted in favor of pushing through the requirement for all consumer electronic devices to use a common charger by the end of 2024.

The new rule will mean that Apple will need to ditch Lightning for the first time on iPhones, using USB-C as the majority of the smartphone world does.

Apple is already rumored to be planning to move to USB-C with the arrival of the iPhone 15 next year, but this move means that it will have to do so with iPhone 16 at the very latest.

However, this vote won’t only affect the iPhone. Plenty of other products currently use Lightning cables and connectors, including the iPad and accessories like AirPods, AirPods Pro, and AirPods Max.

Even Apple’s trackpads and other pointing devices use the same Lightning connector, as do its keyboards. Many Beats products also use Lightning.

The move to USB-C is something that has been a long time coming, with Apple having already moved most iPads over to the connector.

Now it’s increasingly clear that the Lightning port is coming to the end of its life, ten years after its debut in 2012. At the time, Apple said it was a connector built for the next decade, a timescale that turns out to have been pretty on the money.

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