Wireless Charging Market 'Slower to Develop,' Says ON CEO

The wireless charging market has been “much slower to develop than we anticipated,” said ON Semiconductor CEO Keith Jackson during Q&A on the company’s Q3 earnings call Monday. Jackson was responding to an analyst’s question on the lack of an update on the technology after the company mentioned wireless charging on previous calls. Most applications for wireless charging “appear to be going for multi-mode charging, which we’ve introduced devices for,” said Jackson. ON expects mobile handsets to drive its wireless charging business, and it expects to see “some improvement here for ’18,” Jackson said. ON announced in June an agreement to develop and market a wireless power transfer technology from PowerSphyr that combines near-and far-field wireless charging in a chip targeted to OEMs. David Meng, PowerSphyr CEO, told us (see 1710060023) it hopes to bring the tri-mode wireless charging solution to OEMs in Q1 for consumer-facing products available in first half. ON had Q3 revenue of $1.4 billion, a 46 percent increase from the year-ago quarter.