With the proliferation of connected devices, comes the fear that our home and work environments will eventually become hopelessly entangled with endless power and data cables. Enter Energous, a maker of wire-free charging technology, which is moving into providing cordless juice for wearables and hearing aids.
The San Jose-based company announced that it is partnering with an unnamed “market-leading specialty battery company in the hearing devices and wearables market.” Energous says the deal will allow it to provide over-the-air contained power at a distance to mobile and IoT devices through its WattUp technology.
Energous President Stephen Rizzone said that the joint development and licensing agreement “represents our first foray into the rechargeable battery market which we believe holds great potential for Energous,”
He said that the deal with the medical devices company was made possible by Energous’ efforts to miniaturize its technology and to keep its price point low. He said the Miniature WattUp transmitter and the WattUp-enabled receiver are scheduled to ship either at the end of 2016 or early 2017.
The WattUp-enabled products will be able to access wire-free recharging at distance via stationary in-room transmitters as well as through small, portable WattUp transmitters.
Energous solution can power up multiple devices
Energous says that its technology’s advantage is that it delivers contained, useable power at a distance to multiple electronic devices. The wire-free charging replaces current charging systems that require users to plug devices into wired systems or to set them on top of a charging mat.
MedGadget recently reported that the worldwide medical wearables market is expected to increase from $2.73 billion in 2014 to $10.7 billion by 2023, amounting to a compound annual growth rate of 16.4% between 2015 and 2023.
More importantly Energous joins the ranks of connected devices that seek to capture a share of the huge global implantable medical devices market. Transparency Market Research found that the U.S. implantable medical devices market alone would grow from $25.2 billion in 2012 to $33.6 billion by 2019.
