MediaTek Announces Wireless Charger At CES 2014

Wireless charging certainly took off as something of a fad over the past year and more than a couple new products have been unveiled at CES 2014 that demonstrate a promising future for the nascent market. Earlier, we reported on a reference design released by Intel for a smart charging bowl and now there’s news of the “world’s first multimode inductive and resonance wireless charging solution” from MediaTek.

“Most analysts agree that the adoption of wireless power is being slowed by competing specifications,” said Mark Estabrook, director of strategic marketing at MediaTek in a press statement.“ MediaTek has developed leading technology that will overcome those specification differences even across such different technologies as induction and resonance.”

According to the company, resonance charging offers a variety of benefits over inductive, including the ability to charge multiple and varied devices at the same time and even through walls. A more detailed overview of the technology can be found here.

While resonance charging has a number of advantages, it’s far from a standard, so the company is working on a multimode solution so that existing devices utilizing inductive charging will be supported.

“From a business viewpoint, MediaTek’s technology helps to ensure that capital investments already made in chargers for the home, office, retail and automotive markets will be protected, while providing the benefits of resonant charging with new resonant chargers,” Estabrook said. “Users benefit from being able to charge on virtually any charger platform regardless of underlying technology employed.“

MediaTek is banking on a future where wireless charging is ubiquitous on a global scale, but the company admits that much of this depends on the technology being adopted by product manufacturers. Hopefully, the company will have better luck than Nikola Tesla.

“Industry leaders must work together to quickly adapt to the natural path of technology adoption in order to deliver a complete ecosystem compatible with every device. This is essential to gain the trust and deliver on the needs and wants of the consumer,” Estabrook said.