MWC 2010: Industry split over wireless chargers

The Powermat is one type of wireless charging technology

A chasm has opened up over new wireless charging technology which could do away with the plethora of adapters and cables that bedevil mobile users.

The idea is that it will eventually be possible to charge a device simply by placing it on any enabled flat service, such as a table, an aircraft seat shelf, a car console or an office desk.

The technology is identical to that in an electric toothbrush that charges when inserted into its base. The toothbrush and base are effectively two halves of a transformer, and the primary winding in the base delivers a current by electromagnetic induction into a coil in the toothbrush.

An industry body known as the Wireless Power Consortium (WPC) has proposed a standard called Qi, which is set to be finalised later this year and will allow charging points to be installed in furniture and table mats, for example. Client devices will also need to be adapted.

Qi has the backing of some very big names, including National Semiconductor, Olympus, Nokia, Philips, Sanyo, Texas Instruments, Duracell, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Verizon.

Another member, Fulton Innovation, is at Mobile World Congress this year demonstrating a mock up of a Toyota console with Qi charging surfaces for mobile phones and sat-nav devices.

Fulton's technology is already used in the Dell Latitude Z laptop, but this includes proprietary technology because the draft Qi specification covers only low-power devices drawing up to 5W, equivalent to the maximum power delivered by a USB port. The next iteration will support enough power for a laptop.

Tim Bower, account representative at Fulton, claimed that Qi is already gaining momentum, and that a number of furniture manufacturers have shown interest in incorporating the standard into products.

The efficiency of the system is surprisingly high, considering that it lacks the tight coupling usual in a transformer. Bower said that it is around 70-80 per cent, about the same as a normal power adapter, thanks to the tiny gap of less than 5mm between the primary and secondary coils.

All of which sounds promising, except that Powermat, which claims to be the wireless power market leader with a large installed base, has so far refused to join the WPC.

Powermat, a joint venture between an Israeli and a US company, sells a range of products that adapt existing devices for wireless charging. They include charging mats for between one and three devices, adapters in the form of protective sleeves for iPhone and BlackBerry handsets, general purpose low-power chargers with a choice of connectors for different devices, and a netbook charger.

The firm has also developed replacement batteries for a number of mobile phones with the technology built in. Some phones also require replacement backs to contain the charging coil, but it does not add appreciably to the thickness. New this year are mobile charging mats that need to be charged before use.

Prices for Powermat-enabling a single device start at around £50, which includes the cost of the adapter and the charging mat. But the same mat can be used to charge different devices.

The Powermat stand at Mobile World Congress also shows a high-power surface driving an electric mixer, and one charging point is deliberately covered with water to show that this does not stop it working.

Powermat UK managing director George McGhee dismissed the WPC as "a kind of gentlemen's club of companies trying to push their own technology".

"They have talked about publishing a standard for the past two years and still no standard has emerged," he said.

McGhee claimed that Powermat had told the WPC that it would keep an eye on its activities and look at the standard when it becomes available. "It would not be a huge job for us to comply with the standard once we know what it is," he said.

But could Powermat do that retrospectively, so that existing products would be compliant? "We would have to look at the standard," said McGhee.

"The technology here is only electromagnetic induction. There are not thousands of different ways of implementing it."

McGhee explained that Powermat's intellectual property rested in the way that the receiving and charging device communicate using RFID wireless so that only the required amount of charge is delivered.

"There is intelligent power management going on in here. If we had waited for standards we would never have been in the market," he said.

"We wanted to let the consumers decide what they like and dislike. Since we launched this technology five months ago we have sold 800,000 devices into the US and Europe combined. That is a tick in the box as far as we are concerned."