iGo Sees Consumer Demand Growing For Eco-Friendly Accessories

Accessories supplier iGo received its second U.S. patent (No. 7,779,278) for its “novel approach” to reducing wasted standby “vampire” power, the company said. The company estimates its green technology can automatically reduce vampire power loss up to 85 percent.

IGo has several “products or opportunities in the pipeline,” including green chargers, that in the next several months “will expand our total addressable market to include new areas within the mobile electronics accessory space,” CEO Mike Heil said on a recent quarterly earnings call. He said that “for competitive reasons” he couldn’t discuss specific products under development. But iGo’s “overarching vision is to attach our products and technologies to every mobile electronic device,” Heil said. RadioShack and Wal-Mart are among iGo’s largest customers, the company has said.

At the “core” of iGo’s green technology covered in the patents “is a power circuit that recognizes when a device no longer requires power and automatically shuts itself off, thus reducing the power draw to ultra-low levels,” Heil said. “When the device needs power again, the power circuit turns itself back on automatically. As a result of this innovative technology, both power consumption and energy costs can be reduced."

The first patent iGo recently landed “is specific to the green technology as used in our laptop adapters,” Heil said. The second patent and others pending “cover a broader range of power management solutions,” he said. “It is too early to make any projections about the impact that the patents will have on our business. However, we do intend to be aggressive in our efforts to monetize this technology."

The company thinks that “at a minimum” it can develop a chip with the green technology built in “that can lower the cost of goods sold for our laptop chargers, as well as our other power management solutions,” Heil said. “We believe that the demand for environmentally friendly power management solutions is only going to increase in the future and with a strong IP portfolio we can position the Company to effectively capitalize on this trend.”