Apple To Adopt Micro-USB Connectors for iPhone Charging in Europe

The iPod/iPhone accessories market is worth more than $1 billion, and many of these accessories add functionality (like voice recording, FM tuning or radio transmission) through the device’s proprietary dock connector. So what happens when Apple suddenly decides to make all those accessories incompatible, pissing off a lot of companies in the process?

This scenario isn’t necessarily anything that will happen in the near future, but Apple took a first step towards it a week ago by agreeing to adopt Micro-USB for iPhone charging in Europe. Legislators in the EU have been pushing for mobile phone companies to adopt the standard to keep millions of chargers from being discarded when consumers buy new phones. It’s interesting because it’s almost unheard of for Apple to voluntarily drop a proprietary technology in favor of an open standard - we’ll have to see whether the decision carries over to the U.S.