To be honest, if you walk off an airplane, almost anywhere you will be able to buy a missing cable you may have misplaced to charge any popular hardware at most for the price of a lunch or two.

Also, hotels have cables.

Yes, there are parts of the world where the above does not hold, but did you really mean ANY country in the world?

I get where you're going. But I can't just recall any travel or situation where iPhone cables were not available.

At least they succeeded in being popular enough to be practical.

What the fuck is wrong with people in these comments? You're not the only one ranting about "lost cables". Are there really this many people who are so incompetent in life that they're losing their cables every other week? Feel free to bash the lack of standards; but please stop talking about some theoretical scenario that 99.99% of users never encounter. If you're going to lose your cable, you may as well leave behind your wallet, keys, phone, and the lint that was in your pocket to boot. May as well leave your brain behind on the plane too, if you're so incapable of holding onto your personal property.

It certainly is a standard, it's just a proprietary one. The word "standard" does not mean it has to be open and free for anyone to implement.