It took the industry years to get their act together and leave micro-USB behind, and that was without the replacement being illegal. Maybe Lightning even gave them a reason to look for something better. With other standards, there's at least competition, and adopting a better one can be a selling point.
If a better standard is needed by every phonemaker and agreed upon, and they cooperate in developing it, and the EU (which btw is not where any of these phonemakers are HQ'd) agrees with it.
