Wireless Power Standard - Upcoming Technology

[sheeza]

A new organization hopes to make wireless power a widespread option for electronics in the near future. The initial goal would be to charge particularly low power devices that use 5W or less of power, such as cellphones and portable media players. Later goals would increase the output of the system to include heavier-duty devices such as notebooks and potentially smaller home appliances.

The Wireless Power Consortium hopes to develop a universal standard that would use contact plates to power portable devices by magnetically inducing an electrical charge in an attached device. The move would let users charge devices simply by placing them on a particular surface, including hidden ones, and could avoid the risk of over- or underpowering a device by using conflicting hardware.

Current members of the Consortium include Logitech, Philips, Sanyo, National Semiconductor and Texas Instruments, all of which hope to translate the technology into shipping products. When these devices will appear is dependent on the formal establishment of the standard as well as matching development of the products themselves.