Reach more home owners! Advertise with Smart Homes Now!
Reach millions of home owners now! Advertise with us!
Email Us
Convergence is truly here. The Internet of Things is happening. More household appliances are being hooked up to the Internet so users can control them via their Smartphones. And last Sunday, Ikea, the world famous furniture makers, introduced furniture that can wirelessly charge your mobile devices.
This new collection, which includes desks, lamps and tables, will have wireless charging pads on them; these furniture will charge mobile devices through energy induction transfer. It makes sense for a lamp to have these wireless chargers. Desks and tables, on the other hand, will need to be connected to an outlet for it to charge.
Though it may seem odd at first ( a table that has a cord running from it), it will likely grow on you as you can now put down your mobile phone, or tablet at a specific part of the table to charge it. That’s pretty great.
Ikea will also sell wireless charging kits which users can build and attach themselves onto their existing furniture.
Interestingly, these new wireless charging furniture will need to deal with competing wireless power charging standards:the Qi-Standard powered by the Wireless Power Consortium; the PMA and the AW4P. Why? Because no one really plays nice nowadays. PMA and the AW4P will merge this year so it’s most likely that furniture will have either the Qi-Standard or the new merger’s wireless power standards. Or they can have them both.
The wireless charging tables, lamps and desks will be made available this April and should we get our hands on them, we’ll tell you how great or how bad they are.
Check out the Ikea web site for more information.
