There's rumours Apple made a 10-year commitment to lightning, which wouldn't be at all unusual - especially giving all the moaning when they switched from 30-pin to lightning.

I find it hard to believe that cables are a core part of their business. It just gets thrown out every chance it gets. They put usb-c on their laptops, everyone said it was to sell dongles. They didn't put usb-c on the phones, everyone said it was to sell dongles.

All reminds me of people saying what a huge mistake it was that the original imac didn't have a serial port or a floppy drive.