The European Council has given final approval to the EU-wide harmonisation of charging ports, which means that from 2024 all mobile phones, tablets, digital cameras and other electronic devices sold in the EU will have to use the same USB Type-C charging port. A 40-month grace period is allowed for laptops using the unified charging port.
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Since Android devices have basically completed the unification of USB Type-C interface, Lightning will no longer be applicable to the EU electronic device market according to the new regulation of the EU. Therefore, Apple has become one of the most affected enterprises.
On October 26th Greg Josiwiak, an Apple vice-president, said: “Clearly we have no choice but to follow the rules.” This means that Apple is likely to drop the Lightning connector, which has been in use for a decade since the iPhone5.
The incidents have also sparked heated debate in China. Why does the EU force unified charging ports? Why has Apple been so reluctant to compromise with the EU in the past? China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has also said that the domestic charger interface will be unified standards, in the long run, global electronic device charging interface unification is the trend?
The Apple interface is outdated
The new EU law applies not only to mobile phones and tablets, but also to e-readers, digital cameras, video game consoles, portable speakers, wireless mice, portable navigation systems and almost any other portable smart electronic device.
On 23 September 2021, the European Commission announced a legislative proposal to make USB-C a universal charging port for all electronic devices such as smartphones, tablets, cameras, headphones, speakers and video game consoles in the EU. Picture/Visual China
In fact, Europe has been pushing for a unified charging interface for electronic devices for more than a decade. For the past decade, the European Parliament has been calling on the Commission to come up with proposals for a universal charger solution. On September 23, 2021, the proposed legislation was formally submitted. At the time, commission staff said: “We have given industry plenty of time to come up with their own solutions and the time is now ripe for legislative action to harmonise chargers
