Simply put, if companies determined the market need for 3.5mm port was valuable enough they’d leave it on there.

The reason it's not "valuable" is that they want to force people to buy expensive earbuds every year when they crap out. This is demonstrated by the fact that none of these phones that have removed it have added anything new in it's place and they've only gotten more expensive. Practically every phone on the market is just a copycat phone, camera, social media browsing device. Maybe a few have a stylus. The only thing that differentiates them is specs. My 6 year old phone has more features than anything available today and I dread finally reaching the point where my work apps stop functioning due to it's age and I have to downgrade to some garbage that can't do half the things I used to.