It seems that USB-C iPhones are on the horizon. There’s a high chance that the rest of the accessories that still uses Lightning port will get updated with USB-C port. I do have have the MagSafe Battery Pack and Duo Travel Charger. Having them all in USB-C seems like a breeze as you don’t need to bring Lightning cable anymore but the transition would be expensive. Anyone replacing all their Lightning accessories once they got updated?
The logistical cost to have separate connectors in two different markets would hit the multi-million dollar range. The financial benefit to Apple of not adopting USB-C in any given market cannot be that significant. It comes down to accessory license fees. Apple is losing that market with losing Lightning, but Apple’s image would take a hit from bisecting their connector across markets (“It just works” being their reputation and all — any unnecessary complexity harms that).
It’s really hard to imagine it being worth it to Apple to make USB-C an EU-only thing. I don’t know all the numbers, so I’m not going to say impossible. I would be very surprised though.
And US models have a different chassis to remove the SIM card.
Not saying they will do this, but they obviously don’t care about region specific models.