Wireless Charging – Jump start?

The Chinese may provide a long-needed boost for this technology.

• Oppo is the latest of three Chinese handset vendors that have jumped into the far-field wireless charging game in a sign that differentiation is increasingly hard to come by but also just might finally allow this sector to reach the mainstream.
• Far-field wireless charging has been a theme I have been following for years as the promise of being able to trickle charge multiple devices anywhere has the potential to really improve their functionality.
• Ironically, it is not smartphones where the real opportunity for this technology lies but in smart devices where their placement makes power difficult to supply or where their function has been limited to make battery life acceptable to the user.
• For example, smart door locks could be greatly improved if they could be remotely charged as could home security devices and devices like remote controllers.
• However, given that everyone knows what a smartphone is and that running out of power is a problem, it could well be through smartphones that awareness and commerciality of this technology is achieved.
• This technology is not new and there are a number of companies such as Wi-Charge, Powercast, Ossia and Energous that all have a different approach and have been working to commercialise the technology for years.
• The Chinese have taken a different approach and in the last month, Xiaomi, Motorola and now Oppo have all launched demonstrations or concept videos of how they plan to bring this technology to market.
• They have all chosen to do this through their smartphone offerings which make sense as they can ensure that the receiver is available in a handset as well as use this as a differentiator in the sea of Android sameness.
• The most promising of these is Xiaomi which is using a huge antenna array to beam wireless power directly to receiving antennas in the handset.
• It claims that it can achieve 5W at a range of a few meters which is pretty good but the base from which this is achieved is the size of a small fridge.
• A fridge-sized charger, of course, is completely impractical and implies that the device will be very expensive but also implies that Xiaomi’s technology is far from perfected.
• Ossia can achieve 1W at a similar distance (which I think is enough) and the transmitters that it has demonstrated are far smaller and likely to be far cheaper and more practical.
• Hence, I think Xiaomi’s insistence on being able to deliver 5W may end up being a problem for commercialisation especially when 1W may end up being plenty for trickle charging over long periods of time.
• The IP position in this technology is also incredibly uncertain as Xiaomi’s techniques look very similar to Ossia’s but I can only find a couple of relevant patents applicable that belong to a Xiaomi subsidiary and which have only been filed in China.
• Ossia and Energous, by contrast, have a good number of patents that stretch back over the last 10 years and so the stage is set for a big IP fight should Xiaomi bring this technology to the US or Europe.
• Motorola and Oppo’s demonstrations are very unimpressive to anyone who has seen this technology being demonstrated over the last 5 years which leads me to think that these are not much more than marketing gimmicks.
• Oppo has promised to demonstrate its wireless charging at Mobile World Congress 2021 (June) and given the sudden rush by Chinese handset companies into this area, this could end up being a theme for the 2021 show.
• One possibility is that far-field wireless charging of smartphones, although pretty pointless, is what raises awareness and interest in this technology to a point where its real use case starts to attract the levels of investment that could see it finally begin to take off.
• Hence, I think that the real money is going to be made in smart devices where door locks, security cameras, sensors in remote locations and vehicles no longer have to limit their functionality in order to provide a workable battery life.
• There is still a long way to go in this sector but if the Chinese manage to raise awareness of this technology then this may well help the start-ups backing this technology to start winning commitments for deployments.
• This is a sector that I continue to follow with great interest.