Wireless Charging Organizations A4WP And PMA Reveal Their Brand New Merged Identity: AirFuel Alliance
Earlier in January of this year, two wireless charging organizations announced a plan to merge their forces in order to combat the monstrous market leader Qi. And now Power Matters Alliance (PMA) and the Alliance For Wireless Power (A4WP) seem to have finally combined their assets and member lists to create a new identity: AirFuel Alliance.
PMA, the most famous of the two organizations, uses magnetic induction to achieve wireless charging and has been commercialized in Duracell's Powermats and certain variants of the LG G3 and the Samsung Galaxy S6. A4WP is a more obscure player since its resonance-based charging protocol hasn't been seen in consumer products yet. The two are hoping to consolidate their efforts and know-how to create unified wireless standards that may in the future be non-magnetic, like RF, ultrasound, and laser.
The merged member list brings Airfuel Alliance to over 190 companies including some big names like Intel, AT&T, Starbucks, Broadcom, and more. That's a few dozens less than the 224 members of its competitor's, the Wireless Power Consortium, which stands behind Qi. Both have a few common members however, like Samsung Electronics, Qualcomm, MediaTek, and others. It's logical that big companies don't want to dump all of their eggs in the same basket and are just waiting out to see which standard picks up the most steam and ends up ahead in the long run.
The PMA and A4WP names will be retired "after a suitable period" and certified products with either of the standards included or with multimode systems for both will carry the AirFuel Alliance name and logo.
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