When Apple unveiled its latest phones, earphones and watches last week, it - unsurprisingly - detailed the many new features and applications that had been added to them.
But it didn't say much about the one thing it was taking away.
Because while it bragged about its AirPod Pro’s better battery life, improved noise cancellation and live translation feature, you had to dig into the product’s fine print to see that it would ship without a charging cable.
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Apple has been slowly removing things from its products boxes for years.
Until a few years ago the iPhone came with not just a charging cable, but also a power adaptor and a pair of wired earphones, for example, until the latter two disappeared two years ago. And it’s not even the first time they’ve shipped a product sans-cable – it was dropped from its regular AirPods line last year.
However the fact that this tactic has now spread to its premium, pro-line suggests it’s becoming a trend.
Critics say this is another case of a big company squeezing consumers in order to fatten their bottom line - and there’s no doubt it's financially beneficial to Apple.
USB-C charging cables aren’t expensive to produce - especially not at the scale Apple would require - but they still carry some cost. Removing them also reduces package sizes and shipping costs.
In 2022 analysis by CCS Insight suggested Apple’s removal of the power adaptor and earphones from its iPhone line had boosted its profits by $6.5 billion. That was based on what it saved by not giving away the items themselves and the estimated 40% saving on shipping costs, due to their ability to fit more iPhone boxes into each shipping container.
The fact that more customers may have opted to then go and buy a power adaptor or set of earphones – which continued to be sold separately - also would have boosted revenues.
So the removal of a charging cable from the AirPods Pro is set to benefit Apple’s profits too – albeit to a lesser extent. Even if it reduces the cost of the earphones by a euro or two, that will represent millions of euro for the company each year.
But of course that isn’t what Apple says to justify the move.
When it removed the power adaptor and headphones, Apple cited the environment as its chief concern. The same case will be made for the missing charging cable.
And the argument goes that most people already have a USB-C cable at home (or a wireless charger, or an Apple Watch charger – both of which can be used to power AirPods Pro). In that circumstance, giving consumers another one was likely to be wasteful – not to mention the extra energy expended in getting it to them.
In making this argument Apple may also be taking the opportunity to thumb its nose at the European Union, and make a point about the law of unintended consequences.
The universal’s here
At the end of last year a new rule came into force across the EU, obliging technology companies to use a standard charger type in most new personal devices. It meant that everything from smartphones to tablets to cameras to headphones had to connect the same way – and any that didn’t could not be sold in Europe.
It was an undeniably pro-consumer move.
Europeans would soon be able to picture a time where they would only need to travel with one cable, for example, while the panicked search of drawers and desks for the right type of cable might soon become a thing of the past.
The fact that the law might also reduce e-waste was just an added bonus.
Perhaps the most significant side effect of the EU law, though, was that it forced Apple to ditch its proprietary cable type – something it had stubbornly held onto in one form or another for more than 20 years.
Apple didn’t give that up without a fight – in the years before it argued against the proposals claiming it would stifle innovation and, somehow, increase waste.
Even after it lost the battle in Europe, it tried to fight the spread of the universal charger movement. When India sought to follow Europe’s lead, Apple suggested it could impact the amount of phones it manufactured in the country.
But Europe did win the day and Apple did comply with the new rules. Its entire iPhone, iPad and AirPod range now run on USB-C rather than Lightning. Even the remote for the Apple TV has made the move.
Big companies like Apple rarely like losing battles with regulators. But now, maybe, it’s found a way to turn its loss into a profitable victory.
Because by ceding to the demand to use a universal charger, it can now reasonably argue that users will already have at least one – if not multiple – Apple device-compatible cables in their possession. It can also argue that declining to leave them out of new products is the greenest option – which is ultimately what the EU wanted in the first place.
And it’s not hard to imagine those same arguments being used to justify the removal of a charging cable from other devices in the future. After all, the iPhone now too relies on universal standards for its cable and wireless charging facility.
But while most consumers currently have other cables to fall back on, that won’t be long changing if they’re no longer a default in the items they buy. Suddenly having to make an additional purchase to make your €1,000+ device work will become the norm.
That’s an undeniably anti-consumer prospect.
It should be said that, while Apple is leading the charge on this shift its competitors will no doubt be close behind. As long as consumers show they will accept less in the box, why wouldn’t others seek to boost their profit margins too?
In 2016 Apple launched its first iPhone with no headphone jack. It said this was to make better use of the phone’s internal space – but meant users would have to use headphones that connected via Lightning, or connect regular headphones via a special dongle. Samsung immediately seized on the move – launching ads that mocked the iPhone and highlighted the continued presence of the port in its Galaxy smartphones.
But just three years later, Samsung also ditched the headphone jack – it deleted those mocking ads from its YouTube channel, too.
