It will make headphones more expensive. My son's cat chewed my original headphones and I bought a cheap pair for $5 from a dollar store because I couldn't afford the original brand. I chose Android but my son has an iPhone and a friend stole his headphones so he had to make do with a cheaper set as well.
This will be a hardship on people on a limited income to buy a replacement set of headphones as they will cost more and require a license from Apple in order to make them.
Oddly enough I was modded up because I made some good points.
Apple may be a sacred cow on HN, but if one makes good points about them one might not get modded down.
I chose an Android phone because it allows emulators and development tools on it. I was considering an iPhone in the future, but maybe not if they get rid of the headphone jack. Apple already got rid of the floppy and DVD drive on their Macs, got rid of serial ports and used USB ports, and now change what USB ports they have. There is always still a use for legacy devices and that is how IBM's Microchannel failed and PCs with ISA slots beat it.
For example the Square device that accepts debt and credit cards uses the headphone jack, if Apple does away with it, people can no longer use to to accept credit and debit cards. There are a lot of devices for the iPhone that use the headphone jack for various things. They would all have to be redesigned to use the lighting port instead and that will cost more money to license it from Apple.
This will be a hardship on people on a limited income to buy a replacement set of headphones as they will cost more and require a license from Apple in order to make them.