A large conglomerate of mega corps has backed the European Commission to support a standard of micro-USB connection for charging. The biggest surprise here is that Apple is joining in the support which means that they too will also adopt micro-USB for charging in their wireless devices.
For any other company this wouldn't mean much but because Apple has used the same port design since its iPod inception this could have a wide scale affect on its consumers.
Imagine that you bought an iPhone, a Bose radio with an iPod dock connector, your car has built in support for the connection and Apple changes its port design and all of your devices become incompatible with future products. It's a scenario that could take place if Apple changes from the iPod dock connector to strictly micro-usb leaving millions of 3rd party products incompatible.
It remains to be seen how Apple will implement the charging port as they could solely use the USB port for charging while leaving the standard Apple port for syncing or both. That scenario seems unlikely though as Apple tends to stick to a minimalist design and adding and extra port would take away from that products design. How this unfolds will be interesting for Apple customers and potential customers worldwide.
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