A4WP Technology Demos at Computex, as NeoCon Touts Resonant Wireless Charging

Gill Industries said it will bow its first commercially available “wireless-through-surface” charging transmitter at the NeoCon design expo for commercial interiors, which opens Monday in Chicago. Gill’s TesLink transmitter supports the Alliance for Wireless Power’s (A4WP) Rezence standard and incorporates WiPower wireless charging technology that A4WP founding member Qualcomm is licensing to CE accessories manufacturers, automotive suppliers and furniture makers for wireless charging applications. The new product comes as Intel is developing a Rezence chipset and a competing consortium is eyeing a solution for low-power wireless resonance charging.

Gill is targeting TesLink to its commercial furniture customers for simultaneous charging of devices such as smartphones and Bluetooth headsets from a counter, desk or car console. The TesLink transmitter attaches to the bottom of a nonmetallic surface, connecting the transmitter to power and enabling the work surface above for wireless charging, the company said. Smartphones equipped with a Rezence-compatible receiver in the charging area “will charge just as quickly” as with a wired charge, said a news release Thursday.

TesLink’s solution maxes out at 16 watts of power, and future products will deliver up to 50 watts, Gill said. The A4WP announced earlier last week that it had delivered a specification for wireless power up to 50 watts and said a product certification program for its Rezence brand could be in place by year end. Gill customer Mike Wagner, general manager of Kimball Office, said in the release that the ability to charge through a work surface, “coupled with the flexibility to charge anything from a smart watch to a tablet and, eventually, a laptop,” with freedom to place devices in an uncoupled fashion, “is what is needed in the industry for widespread adoption."

On the other side of the globe, A4WP board member Intel was one of the companies that announced plans at Computex in Taipei to roll out wireless power technology at the chip level. Intel plans to provide chipset solutions using Rezence-branded magnetic resonance technology to OEMs and developers, and demonstrated the technology in prototype notebooks, tablets, a smartphone and a wireless headset, said Ryan Sanderson, IHS wireless power analyst, in a Computex recap Friday.

Sanderson noted that most wireless charging products commercially available have relied on tightly coupled technology such as smartphone case chargers that transfer power directly between coils in the phone and the charging case. The coils must be aligned for power to pass from the charger to the receiver and alignment between the two isn’t always ensured, he said. Intel’s magnetic resonance charging offers flexibility in the distance between the transmitter and receiver allowing for the type of solution that Gill Industries, also an A4WP board member, is launching at NeoCon.

Other wireless charging organizations are moving toward magnetic resonance charging, including the Wireless Power Consortium (WPC), working on a capability that would be compatible with its low-power Qi technology, Sanderson noted. A spokesman for the WPC told us the consortium is working to include resonant charging capability in its next specification update, Qi version 1.2, due later this year or early 2015.

The most recent IHS forecast on wireless power, released in February, calls for loosely coupled wireless power solutions such as Rezence to “grow rapidly from 2014 and to overtake tightly coupled solutions in 2016,” Sanderson said. “If Intel’s developments go to plan, we could see commercially available notebooks with its wireless charging enabling technology built in by 2015.” The total number of devices shipped annually that are enabled for wireless charging will reach more than 50 million this year and accelerate to 900 million in 2018, IHS projects. The potential combined market for wireless power receivers and transmitters is $8.5 billion in 2018, said Sanderson.

Although wireless notebook PC charging isn’t likely to drive mass adoption of wireless power in an office environment, as fewer than 200 million notebook PCs shipped in 2013, other product categories including wireless keyboards and mice, desk phones “and even desk monitors in the future,” could drive the adoption of wireless charging, Sanderson said. Wireless charging at work would also raise the general awareness of the technology and “get consumers used to using it in different environments,” he said.

Infrastructure is critical for mass adoption, Sanderson said. “For consumers to really benefit from wireless power, they need to have access to multiple charging stations throughout their typical day.”