Stephen Shankland, writing for CNET:

At the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco on Tuesday, Intel architects Brad Saunders and Rahman Ismail sketched out a coming USB audio standard that could help push the 3.5mm jack aside. The new specification, due this quarter, adds features to ensure a USB headphone doesn’t drain too much battery power and defines how buttons for pausing music or lowering volume work.

This is an interesting fork in the road for the 3.5mm audio jack. One rumored path is the elimination of the 3.5mm jack from the upcoming iPhone 7, in combination with a potential lightning to 3.5mm headset adapter for legacy headsets.

This USB-C push would be another path, another adapter for legacy headsets.

Seems to me, all roads lead to wireless headphones as the future. The short term is the replacement cycle, similar to what we went through with the elimination of the floppy drive, the CD/DVD drive, and the changeover to the lightning cable. Sturm und drang, followed by acceptance.