Lawmakers in the European Union (EU) have voted to sanction a new law that enforces a common type of charger, the USB-C (Type C), for all smartphones sold within countries in the union from 2024.
As such, the leadership of iPhone parent company, Apple, acknowledged that it would have to comply and change the chargers for upcoming devices, Forbes reports.
Apple’s worldwide marketing head, Greg Joswiak, said the company had no choice but to comply while speaking at a live event held by the Wall Street Journal.
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“Obviously, we’ll have to comply… We have no choice as we do around the world but to comply to local laws”, he said.
Under the new rules, all smartphones, tablets, headphones, cameras, gaming consoles, wireless mice and keyboards will be required to have a USB Type-C charging port by the end of 2024.
Although Apple has iPad models and MacBook models that use Type-C chargers, all iPhones use Apple’s lightning charger.
Joswiak acknowledged that the company wasn’t exactly enthusiastic about the forced change because over a billion people around the world already have devices that use the Lightning chargers.
The marketing head did not offer a timeline for when the switch would happen, neither did he reveal whether Apple would just make a different variant of its devices for the European market while still selling devices with its Lightning chargers everywhere else.
Joswiack also spoke about how both the Lightning and USB C chargers wouldn’t exist if Apple had agreed with the EU’s demand 10 years ago to adopt the Micro USB charging cables which were easily damaged and unreliable.
He added that because part of the EU’s concern at that time was that people had different adapters and connectors, Apple made their cables detachable, so people could connect different cables to the same adapter.
Under the new EU mandate, Apple will have to ship iPhones and iPads with USB-C ports in the region by the end of 2024.