When it comes to wireless charging standards, it’s been quite the rat race. Thus far there have been three working standards to date, all competing to become the official standard. There’s the Power Matters Alliance (PMA) (developed by the owner of the Powermat technology), the Wireless Power Consortium’s Qi charging standard (pronounced “Chee”), and the Alliance for Wireless Power’s (A4WP) Rezence.
No one standard has been deemed the ‘chosen one,’ if you will, and there are products being made to support one, and not the other and vice versa. Or, in the case of Powerkiss, they actually supported both, but not at the same time. (Powerkiss originally produced Qi wireless charging dongles for phones, but after being acquired by Powermat Technologies, they flipped standards entirely and now support PMA (naturally).)
Needless to say, it’s kind of a crapshoot.
In the past I’ve heard some say that PMA was winning the “race,” as they’re backed by some major players, such as AT&T, Duracell, Powermat Technologies, Flextronics, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and Energy Star. In fact, Starbucks began integrating the PMA standard when they began offering wireless charging in various stores across the US, and then again, the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf announced they would be integrating Duracell Powermat chargers in their LA stores.
Even still, WPC (the Qi standard) remains pretty strong, supported by companies like LG, Motorola, Samsung, BlackBerry, and Sony.
Then there is the Alliance for Wireless Power (A4WP), backed by Broadcom, Gill Electronics, Integrated Device Technology (IDT), Intel, Qualcomm, Samsung, WiTricity, and more.
No clear winner, but one could definitely make some predictions.
And so back in January, PMA and A4WP announced a merger. Finally! Some collaboration happening. A definite plus, considering the wireless charging market is expected to be worth nearly $14 billion within five years. We really need some clarity here. And we may finally have some.
Today, PMA and A4WP announced the new combined organization, AirFuel Alliance. A major, major threat to WPC (I feel the need to apologize to WPC now, as I can predict they may shortly fade off into the distance).
The new alliance is comprised of 195 companies, including Intel and Duracell, and well, most of the other companies that were once supporting either PMA or A4WP. New certified products under the alliance will carry the AirFuel name and logo, and support inductive, resonant, and “future standards.” AirFuel Alliance will support the use of multimode systems, ones that operate with both versions of the standard (PMA or A4WP).
Hopefully the new collaboration will bring some coherence to the otherwise wild world of wireless charging standards. A clear path may just may push the industry to a faster adoption, and possibly even better user experience for the consumer. If we’re lucky, that is!
