On the way to a wireless world: the 5 most prominent trends in wireless charging

Business is booming for producers of wireless chargers. Market analysis agency IHS predicts an enormous growth in the sales of wireless chargers. It is expected that circa 2.7 billion receivers and a whopping 6 billion transmitters of power will be sold in the next five years. Those are staggering numbers in and of themselves, but that is not all. On the contrary: the demand for (new) products with wireless charging capabilities continues to grow. Here is an overview of the most prominent developments.

The 5 most important trends

1. 1. Reverse wireless charging

Apple is expected to launch its AirPower this year. It will allow you to charge several devices at once. Huawei is doing something similar. The Huawei Mate 20 Pro lets you charge your iPhones and other Android phones wirelessly: reverse wireless charging.

2. 2. Wireless charging for electric cars

Hybrid cars are gaining in popularity, but no one wants to get stranded with a dead battery. BMW is the first car manufacturer to develop a wireless charging system for hybrid cars. It will be available from July of 2019 for the BMW 530e iPerformance plug-in hybrid.

2. 4. Bridging the gap with wireless technology

Do you remember when the first generation of wireless chargers only allowed for a distance of a few centimetres between the charger and the product? For new chargers, that distance has increased to ten centimetres – and the technology continues to develop rapidly. The expectation is therefore that it will soon be possible to transfer electricity efficiently across distances of several metres. If we look even further into the future, charging cables will become entirely obsolete. We will simply place our robot vacuums and power drills near a docking station. How easy is that?