Apple’s Lightning charger to be reviewed by EU’s Margrethe Vestager

Apple CEO Tim
Cook.
Getty

• Silicon Valley’s greatest foe, Margrethe Vestager, has
  revealed her next target.
• The European Union’s competition commissioner wants to
  investigate the lack of standardization among phone
  chargers.
• The review has potential to spell trouble for Apple, as
  its proprietary Lightning connector is an obvious outlier in
  the market.

Silicon Valley’s enemy number one, Margrethe Vestager, has
revealed her next target — and it’s bad news for Apple.

The European Union’s competition commissioner is a genuine thorn
in the side of US tech giants, patrolling and enforcing antitrust
laws with a vigour that last month saw her slap Google
with a record $5 billion fine.

Now the dust is settling on the EU’s action against Google for
exploiting the dominance of Android, Vestager is casting around
for her next tech project. And we got a big clue about what it is
this week.

In a written answer to a question
from an EU lawmaker, Vestager said her team is about to
launch a review of smartphone chargers, amid concerns that tech
firms have not acted on a promise to standardize charging points.

Apple, Samsung, Huawei, and Nokia were among 14 companies to sign
a voluntary deal in 2009, agreeing to harmonize chargers for new
models of smartphones coming into the market in 2011.

Margrethe Vestager.
Reuters

Vestager said progress against this aim had not been good enough.
“Given the unsatisfactory progress with this voluntary approach,
the Commission will shortly launch an impact assessment study to
evaluate costs and benefits of different other options,” she
said.

This could spell all sorts of trouble for Apple. Android phones
use either USB-C and micro-USB connectors into the handest, and
Apple’s proprietary Lightning connector is something of an
outlier. This may make it an obvious target for Vestager’s
investigation.

The competition commissioner has shown an appetite to pursue
Apple in the past, ordering Tim Cook’s company to pay
back €13 billion ($15 billion) in taxes to Ireland in 2016.
The charger issue strikes at the heart of Apple’s unique
technology, and threatens a significant source of revenue for the
company.

Apple replaced its 30-pin
connector with Lightning in 2012. Estimates at the time
suggested that Apple could make as much as $100
million from the switch.

And that was before Lightning evolved to provide the dual
function of charger and headphone jack. This means Apple
customers have to pay for Apple headphones (or other Apple-linked
brands like Beats) or buy an adapter, which allows compatibility
with a 3.5 mm headphone jack.

Then there’s the money Apple makes from replacements and repairs.
When the company hit its historic trillion-dollar valuation last
week, the below tweet about chargers went viral:

A simple explanation for this is that the tweet resonated with
Apple users. And indeed, the replies are busy with others
commenting and sharing pictures of their own tales of woe about
Lightning charger.

Then you get on to repairs, which often can only be done at an
Apple store, where a premium is charged for the company’s
services. The firm offers customer repair plans under AppleCare,
which sits under its services division, where revenues exploded 31% to
$9.5 billion in the three months to June.

Apple is yet to respond to Business Insider’s request for
comment, but the company is unlikely to welcome the EU’s interest
in phone chargers.