Wireless power has been one of the holy grails of the technology industry. Consumers want it and tech vendors are eager to please. Not concerning ourselves with the complex technology required to make this power source work, what has prevented the emergence of this technology?

In one word, it would be standards. Industry standards to be exact. Without standards, you have competing vendors designing their own products to meet the requirements of their own retail brands, but not that of other manufacturers. It’s for this reason that we have so many proprietary power adapters.

However, in the case of wireless power, this hurdle has now been cleared. The new standard is known as Qi, pronounced as Chi which means “spirit” or “energy of life” in Chinese (Mandarin).

This universal standard has achieved version 0.95 for interoperability testing with version 1.0 expected to be just around the corner. The Qi standard will apply to devices rated at 5 watts and under and has been agreed upon by many of the leading brands including Duracell, Olympus, Philips, Samsung and Sanyo to name just a few.

[Source]