Two of Three Wireless Charging Groups Team Up On Multi-Mode Initiative

The Alliance for Wireless Power (A4WP) and the Power Matters Alliance (PMA) agreed to consolidate standards in the hopes of accelerating the growth of the wireless charging market. At the same time, WiTricity, developer of the resonant wireless power transfer technology behind PMA’s magnetic resonance efforts, joined A4WP as a board-level member company. A4WP President Kamil Grajski called that an “endorsement” of a “magnetic resonance pure play” that “adds a very credible, vocal and effective player to the A4WP team.”

Under the agreement, PMA adopts the A4WP’s Rezence specification as the PMA magnetic resonance charging specification for both transmitters and receivers in single and multi-mode configurations. A4WP adopts PMA’s inductive specification as a supported option for multi-mode inductive, magnetic resonance implementations. The organizations will collaborate on their open network API for network services management.

According to the two associations, which will continue to promote their individual standards and function independently, the agreement “establishes a clear path for industry consolidation by harmonizing technical standards that deliver interoperability” and streamline next-gen wireless charging. The announcement comes two weeks before Mobile World Congress in Barcelona where the two standards groups can present a united front to handset and accessories vendors that have been reluctant to commit to one standard in what has been largely a three-horse race.

The third and longest standing wireless power standards group, Wireless Power Consortium -- which promotes the Qi standard -- has not shown an interest in combining forces. At the Wireless Power Summit in Austin in early December, A4WP and PMA hinted at a possible meeting of the minds, while WPC chairman Menno Treffers stood firm on WPC’s Qi wireless charging standard’s independence citing the significant investment its backers have made (CED Dec 9 p1). At the same time, Treffers called three standards vying to be the one for such a market “very unusual,” and said “a couple of years from now there will be only one.” The WPC didn’t immediately respond to questions on the A4WP-PMA announcement or whether it plans to join.

There’s been a lot of overlap in the wireless charging industry as technology has advanced and new groups formed. As of December PMA shared 27 members with A4WP, the new kid on the block, formed by Samsung and Qualcomm in spring 2012. Qualcomm is also a member of PMA. “There’s a lot of sharing of membership,” PMA President Ron Resnick told us, “so it seemed to make sense to try to work together harmoniously to, based on market opportunity, deliver dual-mode solutions.” A4WP, which announced its Rezence brand last month, has quickly grown to 80 member companies as its growth has attracted new members. PMA has roughly 100 member companies.

"One of the reasons we joined is because Intel joined,” Eric Giler, CEO of WiTricity, told us about his company’s decision to join A4WP as its 8th board member. That Intel joined a group co-founded by its competitor Qualcomm, “said more about where the market is going than anything,” Giler said.

"The ecosystem had been stalling,” Resnick said, “because of the notion of different standards and uncertainty about what vendors and mobile operators should bet on.” Resnick received numerous comments from members asking, “What are you going to do to fix this?” he said. Without the alignment of the two groups, “the industry was going to move a lot slower,” he said. “Now there can be interoperability and seamless access to wireless charging wherever a customer goes.” As part of the agreement PMA is sharing public charging venues that it has in place in select Starbucks, Delta Sky Club and McDonald’s locations, and those retailers “would love to see that happen,” he said.

For manufacturers, the agreement opens the door to a “bigger and more scalable market that can move faster,” Resnick said. The organizations expect vendors to commit more to manufacturing products that will be an impetus for global network services to develop worldwide. In turn, that should motivate public venues such as airports to get involved, he said.

PMA defined a system specification for a network that’s “agnostic to the magnetics,” Resnick said. An inductive-only or a resonant-only product can connect to the network, he said. “That’s what the public infrastructure folks want,” he said. The organizations aren’t forcing dual-mode “but we're encouraging it,” he said.

When Resnick, a former Intel executive coming from a world of open standards, joined PMA last year he pushed to add magnetic resonance to the PMA standard. PMA began, and still promotes, magnetic induction technology, which requires a device to be aligned precisely with charging coils for a wireless power transfer to occur. WiTricity’s magnetic resonance technology extends the charging distance from a few inches to multiple feet depending on the application; adds a height element, which opens the technology to working through furniture; and allows multiple devices to charge simultaneously on a charging surface.

Commercialization could happen as soon as the second half of this year, Resnick said. WiTricity, for one, is ready. The company, whose financial backers include Intel and Foxconn/Hon Hai, showed a reference design of a charging sleeve for an iPhone 5 at CES that will be made available “immediately” to A4WP members “so handset companies take the design and make an accessory,” WiTricity’s Giler told us. The ideal is to embed the technology directly into phones, Giler said. He compared the charging cases to dongles for technologies such as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi that predated embedded designs. “Once people saw the utility of Bluetooth it took off, he said. “It’s in every single phone now.” He noted that Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said in a CES keynote that two major initiatives for Intel going forward are no passwords and no wires. “This is a way to get rid of the wires,” he said. The dream is “to have it in everything,” he said.

The combined global market for wireless power receivers and transmitters is expected to reach 1.7 billion shipments in 2023, up from about 25 million in 2013, said Ryan Sanderson, analyst at IHS, in a prepared statement. The agreement between A4WP and PMA “serves to accelerate an interoperable wireless charging ecosystem seen as critical to the broad adoption by consumers,” he said.