Apple will drop iPhone Lightning port in favor of USB-C in 2023, claims analyst

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

According to company analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple is going to swap its proprietary Lightning port for the universally-embraced USB-C next year.

In a pair of posts, he claimed that Apple was going to make a change in 2023, based on a survey of component manufacturers.

The final spec details still depend on iOS support, but the final spec could improve the transfer and charging speed of the phone.

(2/2)

It's expected to see existing USB-C-related suppliers of Apple's ecosystem (e.g., IC controller, connector) become the market's focus in the next 1-2 years, thanks to vast orders from iPhones and accessories' adoption of USB-C ports.

— 郭明錤 (Ming-Chi Kuo) (@mingchikuo) May 11, 2022

Rumors and speculation about Apple adopting theusb-c for the iPhone have been going on for years. Apple has joined the fold of the smartphone industry in embracing the reversible USB-C standard, as well as adding it to its most recent iPads and using it on many Macs. The EU is considering a proposal that would make it mandatory for all electronics to have a single port for data and charging.

Apple has always been resistant to the idea. It has been suggested that the company would rather make its devices portless, using wireless charging and data transfer, than use the standardusb-c. Last year, Kuo predicted that Apple wouldn't be considering a port for the C port. He said in March that Apple would keep the Lightning ports for the foreseeable future.

Maybe, though, the lightning has stopped. The decade is nearly up, as MacRumors noted in a recent piece, when Apple introduced the standard in September 2012.