Yes that's right, Lightning or 3.5mm are not a factor in delivering a digital signal. However, the iPone is limited by the quality of the chip, amp, and other factors. Moreover, Apple has to offer a flat output to accommodate whatever device is plugged into it. A Lightning device will have its DAC and amp customized to the equipment it's driving. So that will be the first improvement. The next will be the quality of the DAC & Amp. Some will introduce outboard power supplies to better drive the headphones over what the iPhone can provide. All of that will benefit the playback of lossless sound files.
And you're right. Lightning is no guarantee of better sound. While I've no doubt some manufacturers will try to screw their consumers, I really don't see this any different than the current headphone market -- the customer chooses which pair sounds best. The iPhone quality is actually out of the equation now, as it send only a digital signal. So for the first time a customer is going to hear their music the way the headphones reproduce it. And now the burden of producing good sound is entirely on the headphone maker. If they cut corners, then they will lose in the marketplace, just like it is today. The customer will finally hear the difference between cheap headphones and high priced headphones, and they will get what they pay for, for better or worse.
But my guess is Apple is going to make the most of that marketing.
Rumor has it that Apple is addressing the sound file quality in iTunes and Apple Music. And I would expect that they would as part of introducing and selling a headphone jack-less iPhone. At a minimum a new AAC codec. As I mentioned above, I think there are a lot of ways to use custom DAC/amp combos to improve the sound of even basic headphones. But in general, the appeal in marketing is the prospect of affordable HQ audio, or at least opting for more expensive equipment if someone demands it. The reality is, putting the analogue conversion in the outboard device, or adapter, opens up all kinds of other digital control that wasn't possible before, not just sound enhancement. So it's all of that which Apple offers over the original iPhone "dumb" adapter. Streaming lossless audio is going to be a bandwidth problem, but again, if Apple's going down this path, then there must be some kind of plan for this, perhaps along the lines of FaceTime calls not counting toward bandwidth.
Im not arguing that Apple won't get blowback over this no matter what. If Apple acted too soon here, it wouldn't be the first time they backtracked and put the 3.5mm jack back into the 7s, or 8. I've been giving them the benefit of the doubt for a while now, that they needed the space, something Droid makers would also then be facing. However, the rumor of the 2nd speaker would make a mockery of that rationale, and I'm not sure how Apple could survive if the Galaxy 8 can compete head to head on everything the 7 does, but retains the 3.5mm jack.
No, Tim Cook said Apple had sold 1 billion active devices, not iPhones. That includes, Mac, iPads, Watch, TV, iPod Touch. Now considering the average life span of all those other devices, your argument suggests there's less than 300 million of everything else Apple sells in active use. That's hard to imagine when I'm still using my 2011 MacBook Pro. And my Mom is still using her 2009 MacBook.
My original figures came from the reports of around 2.6 billion smartphones worldwide, of which Apple has about a 15% share. So around 400 million -- and that's rounding up all the way around.
This is where I got my latest figures:
http://bgr.com/2015/06/01/iphone-6s-vs-iphone-6-sales/
Now, they are arguably almost 9 months out of date, and don't take into account the 6s launch, but I would also suggest that some portion of every 6s upgrade, completely replaced the earlier device. I know mine does. I have all of my previous iPhones, mainly because they became functionally unreliable, or to use as backups. I would suggest that every new purchase is not a new and unique activation, but a wholesale replacement of a lost or damaged phone. I even recall reading a study that gave a particularly high estimate of the number of old iPhones that went into a customers drawer, never to be used again when they upgraded. So taken as a whole, 475-500 currently active iPhones sounds about right.
