Apple confirms it is changing the iPhone’s charging plug

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Apple will change the plug on the bottom of the iPhone, it has confirmed.

The company will comply with a new EU ruling that will force all devices to use the same USB-C standard, a senior executive said. While the rule affects all such devices, Apple remains the only significant phone manufacturer that has not yet switched to the standard.

As such, it will be forced to remove the Lightning cable on the bottom of the phone.

Apple’s marketing boss, Greg Joswiak, said that “obviously we’ll have to comply, we have no choice”, in response to a question during a live Wall Street Journal event.

But he refused to give any indication of when the new phone could arrive. Mr Joswiak said only that “the Europeans are the ones dictating timing for European customers” – a reference to the 2024 deadline, set by the EU, for all phones to adapt to the new standard.

He also would not give any indication of whether Apple would make the change across the world, or only in the EU countries in which it is mandated.

Mr Joswiak made clear that Apple still maintains that the new law, which finally passed this week, is a bad decision. He said that it would limit innovation, force companies to adopt standards that are not the best, and suggested that it was unnecessary because chargers with detachable cables make standardisation less important.

Apple has long stood against the EU’s law, arguing that it would cause unnecessary for problems, contribute to waste, and that it would be more productive to ensure that everyone could plug their wires into the same plugs, rather than focusing on the end of the cable that goes into the phone.

But in private it has seemingly been moving towards adopting the rules. Many of its devices – such as the iPad – have already dropped the 10-year-old Lightning cable and moved to USB-C.

Some have suggested that Apple might not need to adopt the new cable because it could have gone entirely wireless before the new rules go into place. Wireless charging standards are not yet subject to the same legislation and so Apple could introduce its own technologies if it was not using plugs.

However, Mr Joswiak made no reference to such technologies, and suggested that Apple would be complying with the new plugs, suggesting that a USB-C iPhone is on its way.