Growing Awareness, Dropping Prices Should Fuel Wireless Charging Market, Says ABI Research

The number of wireless charging-ready devices has outpaced charger shipments to date, but resonant wireless charging should boost the overall wireless charger market, said a report from ABI Research. Some 213 million Powermat/Rezence chargers are forecast to ship by 2020, but they’ll be outpaced by the 713 million Qi chargers expected to ship during the period, said ABI. Many smartphone OEMs haven’t bundled wireless chargers with handsets, which has stunted the market for chargers, said ABI, but growing awareness and dropping prices should drive sales of chargers per active user, said the research firm. Broadcom, Microsoft, Qualcomm and Samsung are among the companies that belong to both the Qi and Powermat/Rezence trade groups, but companies “will need to send clear signals about their product support to consumers,” said ABI. Samsung ships devices today that support both Powermat and Qi, but ABI predicts Samsung eventually will throw its full support behind Qi in future products. The Qi standard has a big lead both in the direct-to-consumer retail charging pad market, “notably in the Samsung Wireless Charging Pad,” said ABI, and in public charging stations, with “thousands of locations,” compared with Powermat’s hundreds. Public charging stations are viewed as an important driver for expanding consumer awareness and as a way to highlight the convenience of wireless charging, it said. Smartphones with wireless charging capability are driving early awareness of the technology and will account for roughly 84 percent of all wireless charging receivers by the end of 2015, said ABI.