The two wireless charging standards Alliance announced the merger and renamed it AirFuel Alliance.

The two wireless charging standards Alliance announced the merger and renamed it AirFuel Alliance.

Alliance for Wireless Power (A4WP) and Power Matters Alliance (PMA) were merged earlier this year. On Tuesday, they officially announced that the merged Alliance was renamed AirFuel Alliance. The new name indicates that the two groups will work together to unify the wireless charging solution standards for smartphones and tablets as soon as possible.

A4WP standard, founded by Qualcomm and Samsung, aims to establish technical standards for wireless charging devices for electronic products, including portable electronic products and electric vehicles, the magnetic resonance wireless charging technology is used. AT&T, Google, and Starbucks joined the PMA alliance, which applied the electromagnetic induction wireless charging technology. After the merger, the two will compete with the Qi Wireless charging standard of Wireless Power Consortium (WPC), while Qi mainly applies the electromagnetic induction technology. The difference between the two technologies is that the electromagnetic induction technology requires close contact, but the charging efficiency is high. However, although the magnetic resonance wireless charging technology can achieve wireless charging at a long distance, the charging efficiency is low.

The new AirFuel Alliance has 195 Member companies and will continue to work towards the ubiquitous vision of wireless power. However, these members are also supporters of WPC.

The AirFuel Alliance brand will begin to appear in its products and documents to help consumers understand which wireless charging technology is used by their devices.

Although either of the AirFuel Alliance solutions and Qi standards can provide wireless power transmission, these two methods are not yet compatible. This also makes the same device unable to support two standard wireless charging devices at the same time.

Obviously, it is more convenient for consumers to unify wireless charging standards, but there are still two incompatible standards. If you don't think about it in the past, after A4WP and PMA are merged and renamed as AirFuel Alliance, at least you don't need to remember another troublesome name.