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Apple Stops Selling iPhone 14 and iPhone SE in More EU Countries
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You bet I am. Proper British patriots casting our Brexity business wider than the corrupt collapsing EU, inviting the wider world to thrust themselves into our free, non-woke Lightning ports while we triumphantly ignore the enormous single market on our doorstep.
Lightning is freedom from the USB-C hegemony. JOIN US IN THE FIGHT TO KEEP DYING PROPRIETARY STANDARDS ALIVE.
All iPhones sold worldwide have SIM slots — except in the US (https://www.macrumors.com/2024/09/09/iphone-16-models-still-have-sim-slot-outside-us/).
So, you could import from:
- Bahrain
- Canada
- Iraq
- Guam
- Japan
- Jordan
- Kuwait
- Mexico
- Oman
- Qatar
- Saudi Arabia
- United Arab Emirates
- USVI)
I live in the EU, i can buy hundreds of new things with mini usb or micro usb, because these things where not updated but are still relevant today. Not smartphones. This EU regulation is dumb - at least for me, maybe not for other people. The market has to regulate itself.
Just gone on the Apple IE (Ireland) site and indeed the SE3 and iPhone 14 is gone. Very surprising move that.
It leaves an 879 Euro iPhone 15 128Gb as the cheapest iPhone you can officially buy from there.
You can still buy a 14 from Curry's.ie at this time though (big this party electrical retailer). I suspect this is a voluntary move by Apple to clear the decks by the end of the year.
Would we be utterly surprised if the SE4 ends up replacing both SE3 and 14 (and the 14 Plus) sooner rather than later though? Bound to be Q1 2025 rather than as late as Q2 2025 now I'd have said.
It leaves an 879 Euro iPhone 15 128Gb as the cheapest iPhone you can officially buy from there.
You can still buy a 14 from Curry's.ie at this time though (big this party electrical retailer). I suspect this is a voluntary move by Apple to clear the decks by the end of the year.
Would we be utterly surprised if the SE4 ends up replacing both SE3 and 14 (and the 14 Plus) sooner rather than later though? Bound to be Q1 2025 rather than as late as Q2 2025 now I'd have said.
Rule Britannia, Britannia rules USB-C
We from England saved Lighting for thee...
There are - unfortunately - exceptions: Medical Devices.
My hearing aids (Cochlea Implant) charger has outdated Micro-USB and they are still selling them....
But the market sometimes doesn’t regulate itself and sees Apple abusing their market dominance to sell a needlessly proprietary iteration of USB 2.0 tech for a decade.
That’s where EU regulators stepped in and forced the entire industry to adopt a single standard.
Might not be the best for someone who’s fully in the Apple ecosystem and still owns lots of Lightning devices.
But for the average European, who might own some Apple devices but also use a slew of non-Lightning devices regularly, this is a mayor win.
I get what you’re saying.
But technically, one can still easily acquire a new SE 2 or SE 3.
You’re just not going to be able to get one directly from Apple.
There’s a always someone in the market for a new iPhone, so Apple is definitely losing some amount of sales if they don’t offer anything in the budget category.
I could absolutely see Apple pushing SE 4 to January or February just to get something out quickly.
It would be an exception to previous SE launches.
But the sudden switch to USB-C is also an exception altogether.
SE 4 sooner than March/April could happen.
I'm not sure it was needless when Apple rolled it out; given micro-USB was the most common plug.
I think it will have a bigger impact on smaller manufacturers; USB-C was standard for teh major players outside of Apple, and Apple was probabaly going there anyway.
It depends on the margins. If the SE and 16 have the same margins then there is no reason to prefer selling one over the other; if one has a higher margin then it is better to sell the higher margin product becasue it is more profitable.
From today, Apple won't sell a single refurbished iPhone in the EU.
Probably until the iPhone 15 will be available as a refurbished product.
That's to prevent electronic waste, says the EU.
Probably until the iPhone 15 will be available as a refurbished product.
That's to prevent electronic waste, says the EU.
Too bad the EU regulators weren't invested in the "single standard" they were forcing on us enough to think to standardize that "single standard". I could go to the store right now and pick up 5 USB-C cables...and each and every one of them could have different capabilities. The average person isn't going to read the packaging to find out what that cable can or can't do. But they will be surprised when that "single standard" doesn't work the way they think it will. A good example of this...some USB-C cables don't support charging.
Nothing the EU did with this legislation is beneficial. This isn't a major win. Regulators don't always know what's best...
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It got apple off lightning. That's enough for me, and for that, I applaud the EU.
The invisible hand is invisible because it doesn't exist.
You are allowed to sell current stock. Third party resellers for example are allowed to sell their current iPhone 14 / SE stock. You aren't allowed to produce new stock though. Which means that Apple had to take it off.
So if for example Amazon still has a large stock MicroUSB gadgets laying around, they are allowed to sell those. Because if not it would create unessicary e-waste which is also prohibited in the EU. They can even buy stock from importers. But they can't be manufactured past 31st of december this year.
Incorrect. Apple was moving off lighting the DAY THEY (Apple) INTRODUCED USB-C with the 12" MacBook. Intel developed USB-C together with Apple.
Apple was moving away from Lighting on EVERY SINGLE DEVICE before the EU started enforcing the legislation. This INCLUDES the iPhone. They (Apple) did take a bit longer, because Apple wanted to move to wireless charging completely with AirPower. That failed so they tried again with MagSafe on iPhone. That didn't fail, but is still not very popular. So then they moved to USB-C for the forseeable future.
This is incorrect. They didn't create this legislation because of Apple. They created this legislation because of early Android phones all had different connectors. They then proposed to make USB-Mini the standard connector. But it took them (the EU) more than a decade to get the legislation passed. In this time the standard already had shifted to USB-Micro on most and USB-C on some devices. So they had to alter the legislation one last time and made USB-C the standard and finally got it passed.
Only now it becomes enforcable. And the time the EU took to get this past will be a very big problem in the future when USB-C becomes outdated. And I have already seen USB-D being in development. The chance that USB-D will become a charging standard in the EU before 2040 is 0% though.
The chance that usb-d comes to fruition and is released before 2040 is about 0%, as well
It'd be released within the next 5 years. We've already reached the limit of USB-C with 240W and 40 gb/s.
For example we already have Oculink that leaves Thunderbolt eating dust. But Oculink isn't a simple standard.
Doubt
The protocol and specs can and will be updated beyond the current. It's not maxed out.
You can doubt. But that's the limit. We are going to need more pins to go faster. Which has become an issue.
Someone clearly didn't read the article.
The VERY FIRST SENTENCE answered your question:
"Starting today, the iPhone 14, iPhone 14 Plus, and third-generation iPhone SE have been fully removed from Apple's online store in most EU countries, due to an imminently-effective regulation that requires smartphones with wired charging capabilities that are newly placed for sale to be equipped with a USB-C port in the EU.