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Wireless Power standards are like Highlanders: There can be only ONE

Well get ON with it then, we're waiting

You don't win standards wars by being the best technically: Just ask Betamax

Both types of charging have their benefits, but as any technologist knows, the best standard from an engineering standpoint doesn't always win a war in the shops.

Betamax was technically superior to VHS video cassette recording, for example, but the lesser standard won the battle for the hearts and minds of the population. In some ways WiMax was superior to LTE as a 4G standard, but again didn't get momentum.

Obviously, whichever way the buying public goes on wireless power will decide who wins this standards war. On the face of it, the WPC is winning at the moment, but it's still very early days yet.

"We're highly unlikely to know when the tipping point was with wireless power, as with most standards, until some years after it has happened," Treffers said, pointing out that we'd seen a similar pattern with Wi-Fi adoption.

The latest data from analyst house IHS suggests the WPC has a commanding lead, but Treffers was careful not to make extravagant claims about his group's specification. These kinds of standards issues typically take five to 10 years to iron out.

We're told 2013 saw a huge uptick in Qi-compatible devices out on the market, but those figures can look a little misleading. Yes, there were 25 million devices using Qi sold last year, but that's against billions of devices out there that could be using the standard but aren't.

Over on the A4WP and PMA side, Grajski said he's focusing on building a low-cost charging infrastructure to support wireless power – building chargers into apartments, hotel rooms, cafes, airports, airplanes, and so on.

Kamil Grajski

Infrastructure will be key says A4WP president Kamil Grajski

That infrastructure is going to be key, he reckons, but buyers are understandably nervous about committing big bucks to investing in wireless power charging stations until the standards issue is sorted out. The Marriott chain is trying out Qi chargers, airline Emirates is on board with building A4WP power points, and you can find PMA kit in some Starbucks establishments.

Crossing the chasm to consumer acceptance

One thing is clear in wireless power standards: neither side is going to give an inch on this one. The upshot of this is that we're going to be facing a long war and an awful lot of technology is going to be chucked into landfill (or hopefully recycled) if it picks the wrong kind of wireless power adaptor.

Wireless power is certainly coming. There are plenty of people who would like a future in which there's no need to lug around cables and adapters. Sure, wired charging is faster and more power efficient, but anyone who's left their charger at home or suffered a breakage en route knows how much frustration there is in an unchangeable piece of technology.

In the future, you could set it down next to your morning coffee or your car dashboard. Yes, charging-over-USB has that already, but not everyone remembers or wants to carry a USB wire around – in the same way not everyone carries around an Ethernet cable these days.

There's also the fact that wireless power is a logical extension of devices. You never see Captain Picard trying to find the right charger cable for his communicator, nor Luke Skywalker's lightsaber running out of a charge in the middle of a battle.

When was the last time someone whipped out a network patch cable in Starbucks? Instead, everyone's looking around for the wireless network password.

Outside of geekdom, there's plenty of exciting things to be done with wireless power. Induction cooking could revolutionize kitchen designs, for example. With the right sort of saucepan and a large power supply you could do away with old-style stovetops and heat things up more efficiently in the pot, and there are designs that can do this today.

An alternating current running through a coil under the pan generates a fluctuating magnetic field that induces a current in the pan, which causes it to heat up. Voila. Now you're cooking on, er, electrons.

But this brings us to a problem with the wireless-charging gadgets: manufacturers need to ship a charging pad with their device – which is awkward to carry around and needs to be plugged into something.

Alternatively, the hardware makers have to be sure there are enough cars, shops, cafes, lounges, homes and other places with the right over-the-air charging electronics installed to keep people topped up. Just like Wi-Fi is everywhere these days. It's a chicken and egg scenario.

We face a long and protracted battle that could take years to finish, and we'll probably spend a few years after that watching manufacturers litigate in the aftermath.

"The end result will be a function of market forces," Grajski said. "In the meantime consumers will sweat it out. This is both the blessing and the curse of living in a society that encourages technology innovation." ®

Bootnote

Some of us already routinely get energy into our phones without using wires - and we can do it in moments, too, so that our phones are truly mobile all the time rather than immobilised for hours on a pad or similar at frequent intervals. A recondite method known as "swapping batteries" is employed. -Ed

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