The Alliance for Wireless Power (A4WP) said will launch a certification program for wirelessly charging devices by the end of this year and will use the brand name "Rezence" for consumer-facing products.
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Rezence is a portmanteau of resonance and essence. |
The A4WP is backed by Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) and Samsung Electronics and now boasts more than 60 members. It is one of three bodies competing to set a standard for wireless charging for devices, along with the Power Matters Alliance (PMA) and the Qi wireless charging standard, which is run by the 175-member Wireless Power Consortium (WPC).
In choosing the portmanteau "Rezence," the A4WP said it wanted to combine the words resonance and essence. The Rezence logo includes a lightning bolt inside brackets that form a Z, which the A4WP said can also be used as a standalone mark on a variety of applications.
"The challenge for the A4WP marketing committee and its branding agency was to create a distinct and easy to recognize brand concept that would speak to the unique benefits our technology brings to the wireless charging ecosystem," Geoff Gordon, A4WP marketing committee chair, said in a statement.
According to AllThingsD, at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, the A4WP plans to demonstrate prerelease phones and chargers with the Rezence technology built in, and hopes to have the products in the market by the first half of next year.
The A4WP supports magnetic resonant charging, which is different from the inductive charging Qi model backed by the WPC and Power 2.0 from the PMA because the device and charger are less tightly coupled. This allows users to charge multiple devices simultaneously and across short distances. This also means users don't need to place a device in a particular spot and orientation on a specific charging pad. For retailers and other public locations such as airports, the A4WP said Rezence can be easily integrated into existing furniture and surfaces.
In October Qualcomm became a member of all three wireless charging bodies in the hope that by having a foot in the three camps it can harmonize the different standards into a single one. Gary Matos, an Intel worker who serves as director of strategic marketing for the A4WP, said that could soon be at hand.
"Convergence will need to take place," he told AllThingsD. "I suspect it is not going to be too, too far off in the future."
For more:
- see this release
- see this AllThingsD article
- see this The Verge article
- see this CNET article
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