9to5Mac:
A report today from Ceros details the trend that Apple’s top-selling products overall (not just accessories) at the major retailer are indeed dongles. Specifically, over the past two years the 3.5mm to Lightning adapter and 3.3-foot USB-C to Lightning cable have been Best Buy’s most popular Apple branded items.
While AirPods just took over as the most popular individual product as of Q2 2018, dongles still prevailed as the top revenue generator overall, with Apple’s headphones category coming in second place.
Used to be, every cell phone brand made its own unique charger. That made for very little reusability and a nightmare if you forgot your charger. Outcry ensued, and we’ve now moved to two main form factors, both of which plug into the same USB brick. Much better.
This dongle thing feels like the pendulum swinging the other way. Now we have USB-C as a standard on our Macs, but dongles and USB-C confusion means we’ve got similar problems if we forget our dongle.
Will Apple ever move the iPhone from Lightning to USB-C? That certainly would simplify things for travelers, one dongle to rule them all.
UPDATE: I’m guessing this is unit sales, not revenue.
not sure if i followed that narrative. outcry ensued and most manufacturers, except apple, moved to one form factor. not that I don’t prefer lighting over micro-usb… I guess, usb-c is the “future” for other handset makers, although it could be that everything will go wireless first. good thing, that apple uses a broad standard there.
otoh, apple removed the headphone jack and moved to usb-c on the macbook, and now the airpods, lightning to 3.5mm and usb-c to lightning are the top sellers at best buy. could be a strategy to sell high-priced dongles as well.
This XKCD comic seems appropriate here – https://xkcd.com/927/
Lightning > USB-C
What’s odd is that the lightning to 3.5mm is bundled with the phone. Are there really that many people who lose the bundled one and/or routinely use more than one set of wired 3.5mm headphones with their phones?
That the lightning to USB C is a big seller makes more sense to me, because Apple doesn’t bundle it with anything and as far I know they haven’t authorized anyone else to make that cable yet.
Apparently. And I can think of an easy scenario where this happens: if you share your headphones between your phone and your laptop. Or your iPad.
This, to me, is where Lightning falls down in favor of USB-C (or the legacy jack). I don’t care for wired headphones, but if I did, having a single port that let me use the headphones across all my devices would be incredibly important.
On the other hand, many users (myself, my fiancee) literally never buy any dongles for their phones.
Ref. the update, they might sell more units at BB of the dongles, but it has to be rounding error in the overall profit story.
USB-C will simplify nothing for travelers. It’s been over a year and we still haven’t seen USB multi-port chargers that power more than one USB-C device. Why? Because that one USB-C port supplies 50+ watts out of 60+ for the entire charger. So if you’re traveling with a laptop and phone (and tablet and watch) and want to use a single, multi-port charger, your only option is USB-C for laptop, USB-A for phone (and tablet and watch). And that’s if you travel with a laptop. My wife and I travel with iPhones and iPads and one multi-port charger for all of them. Everything plugs into USB-A ports, so what’s on the other end, be it Lightning or USB-C, makes no difference. Same is true of external battery packs.
As for audio support, USB-C is hit-or-miss with different adapters that work with different phones, and that’s if the phone even supports USB-C audio. Meanwhile, Lightning has always supported audio. You buy a Lightning audio adapter dongle, you know it will work. USB-C is a great spec for laptops, not for phones.
Finally, I will point out 9to5 claims “dongles still prevailed as the top revenue generator overall” but that’s not stated in the report. Report claims dongles were the top sellers, which would measures units sold, not revenue generated.
I think Lightning has a significant “it just works” advantage over USB C, which is a usability disaster. I’ve got 3 or 4 different types of USB C/Thunderbolt cables for my MBP. They all look the same, but they are not interchangeable.
It also has an installed base advantage, at least among people who are likely to buy another iPhone.
You talk about charging, but by far the most popular adapter here is the lightning-to-3.5mm adapter, which has nothing to do with charging. Rather, it means that plenty of people haven’t gone the Bluetooth route yet, people lose their bundled dongles, and have to buy new ones.
In other words, this is highlighting something where Apple is not well-serving their customers. I say this as someone who has gone the full-Bluetooth route and don’t miss the headphone jack on my iPhone X. The reality is, people still use wired headphones. Lots of people at my gym (in Palo Alto, one Tim Cook himself goes to ~once a week, literally the home of Apple users!) still use wired headphones and the adapter.
(BTW, I’ve observed that Tim Cook uses both an Apple Watch and AirPods when he’s at the gym.)
In a sane world, Apple moves to USB-C, since USB-C solves about 99% of the problem Lightning was meant to solve – “smaller than 30 pin dock connector and ambidextrous and has enough connectivity for serious charging and fast data and all that” … and is a standard connector*.
I’m not 100% convinced Apple will do so, simply because USB-C is a trifle thicker and wider than Lightning.
(* Apple loves standard connectors … as long as they’re not impeding a good user story or functionality.)
Wait, the USB-C to Lightning cable isn’t a dongle at all, it’s an actual cable with the current and future (for the time being) USB port on the other end. I think that’s an important distinction, unless we’re also going to include USB-A to Lightning cables in this discussion, which sounds and feels silly.