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At Sunday’s Mobile World Congress, Ikea announced its first furniture line to offer wireless charging for smartphones and other mobile devices. The Swedish furniture company partnered up with the Wireless Power Consortium to integrate popular Qi wireless chargers into products of its “Home Smart” line, which includes lamps and bedside tables.
Soon, if ChargeAll succeeds, there will be charging stations that are ubiquitous as ATMs. Jeffrey Manganis, the founder of ChargeAll, has designed kiosks that hold mobile devices and charge them, without requiring cords. He wants them in fast-food restaurants, shopping malls, and envisions business-savvy companies offering free charges in exchange for surveys or in-store purchases. The branding opportunities around free – or at least incentivized – charges are almost limitless, and if this, or something similar, comes to pass, brands should consider media strategies around interactive charging campaigns.
Remember how long you waited for your modem to connect to the internet in the dial-up days? We’ve come a long way since then with WiFi and according to Fulton Innovations the way we charge our devices is about to take a similar wireless leap. During the SXSW Interactive panel “Juice Without Wires: The Future of Wireless Power,” Fulton showed off it’s technology which includes tables and retail shelves that use electrical induction to charge devices that simply lay on top of them. Fulton takes the technology a step further by combining it with printed electronics to show that magazines and CPG packaging can actually pulsate with electricity when sitting on a wireless surface.
Some of the presentation was a recapitulation of Fulton’s display at CES in January but the hour-long format let the company to expound and a fuller vision for the future. Most notably, Fulton has its eye on electric vehicle charging, proposing a solution where cars can simply park on a wirelessly charged smart-space without the need for a plug. The parking spot would also be able to recognize individual cars, collect data, and send information to the owner via a mobile app.
