Not defending that it's a good thing, only saying that the arguments in this article for that "Apple is the only company that can get away with this" is simply false.
I'm not so sure. Just because a few Chinese phones have adopted it doesn't mean anyone can do it. Just look at what happened when Samsung abandoned waterproof cases, removable batteries, and SD cards with the Galaxy S6 in their effort to ape Apple: their sales plunged, and the used-market prices of S5s were very high. Then they brought back two out of those 3 features and the S7 seems to be doing well. So Apple was able to get away with not having any of those features, while still enjoying a huge sales volume and profit margin. Samsung found out the hard way that their flagship customers simply are not the same as Apple's.
So maybe it's possible to dump the headphone jack on some cheap-o phone model in a different market and not see a difference in sales. That doesn't mean everyone could do it for all phone models. One of the strengths of the Android market is that there's many different phone models, by different makers, with different prices and features and strengths. Maybe Chinese buyers don't care much about 3.5mm jacks, maybe those particular phones are typically sold to a certain demographic that doesn't use headphones or listen to music, maybe those are barebones phones popular with economy buyers who just want the cheapest phone they can find, etc.
So you're right that it's false that Apple is the only company that could get away with dropping the headphone jack in any phone in any market. But that doesn't mean the opposite is true, that any phone maker could drop the jack in any phone in any market and not see a difference in sales.
So maybe it's possible to dump the headphone jack on some cheap-o phone model in a different market and not see a difference in sales. That doesn't mean everyone could do it for all phone models. One of the strengths of the Android market is that there's many different phone models, by different makers, with different prices and features and strengths. Maybe Chinese buyers don't care much about 3.5mm jacks, maybe those particular phones are typically sold to a certain demographic that doesn't use headphones or listen to music, maybe those are barebones phones popular with economy buyers who just want the cheapest phone they can find, etc.
So you're right that it's false that Apple is the only company that could get away with dropping the headphone jack in any phone in any market. But that doesn't mean the opposite is true, that any phone maker could drop the jack in any phone in any market and not see a difference in sales.