Whatever wireless charging tech Apple decided to use would spark a trillion-dollar upgrade cycle in cars, gym equipment such as treadmills, office furniture, night-tables (especially in hotels), coffee-shop furniture and basically all flat surfaces.
Just to stay competitive, Dunkin’ Donuts will upgrade all its tables to keep pace with Starbucks and there may not be a restaurant that can afford to ignore the trend.
We are talking world-wide here – over a trillion dollars will easily be spent. Some of the upgrades would have happened anyway but do not underestimate the power of Apple to force companies to piggy-back on their success.
Apple could have gone with its own standard and taken a piece of this new trillion-dollar space through licensing but instead they decided to use Qi, the standard we first talked about in 2013 when we were a bit thinner.
Because Apple went the open route, and decided not to make money from their newfound wireless charging dominance, the industry as a whole will flourish.
There will be no Apple-tax and subsequently all vendors have a new standard to focus on. Expect Microsoft laptops to benefit as well because they soon will have to embrace Qi. Ditto for Chromebooks and all Android devices. We saw Qi powering an electric kettle four years ago so it will likely be able to handle the charging of much of our electronics – not servers but at least much of what we put in our laptop bags.
Expect dirt-cheap Chinese Qi-power mats. One surmises the quality of these will vary but it will allow people at all income levels to enjoy the new wireless-charging party.
It’s worth pointing out that the Apple’s reality distortion field is in full-effect as Qi chargable phones were around in January 2013. We can expect 80% of iPhone buyers to have no clue about this and tens of millions of Android users are looking at iPhone users – as usual and calling them followers and years behind.
To learn more, be sure to attend the Enterprise IoT Event, IoT Evolution Jan 22-25, 2018 and see IBM, Ingenu, Cradlepoint, TellientARM, McAfee & other major companies. Special focus on Smart Cities, Security, IIoT and case studies.
