I'm not sure how lightning works. Either it's configurable and you can dedicate two pins to an analogue signal, or its strictly digital and the dac and amp duties will be transferred to whatever is on the other end of the lightning cable. what's the significance? well, if it's the latter then it'll cost more because now everything needs dac and amp, and will require replacing your existing earphones, although i'm sure expensive premium lightning dacs/amps will be available if you want to use your existing gear. The consumer looses regardless.
isn't it totally the opposite? It will now be a fully digital loop?
I've seen lightning to 3.5mm adapters hitting the market and they are essentially DACs.. once the port is gone and we're all using either bluetooth or lightning then we won't need a DAC as there's no A to C to D
Either way, this is definitely happening.. I'm in the accessory industry and we've all known for a while.. the biggest question has been whether it'll be a 6SE or 7 and if there'll be a pro.
Personal prediction is this will be a minor inconvenience to 95% of the market who won't give a stuff what it's called and the other 5% will very vocally complain then either buy it anyway or turn a blind eye when Samsung etc inevitably get rid of theirs too.
For those thinking this is the death of apple or it's some gigantic problem just look how many people use the god awful earpods.. we still sell more earpods than any other type of headphones too.. its crazy.
Internal space on phones is incredibly precious, bluetooth has gotten loads better since BT4 (granted I still use wired despite having several pairs of bluetooth because I'm not in the habit of charging headphones but I'll get there!