A CEO who engineered the sale of audio and haptics company Redux to Google is hoping to persuade smartphone manufacturers to embrace a new wireless charging technology.
Nedko Ivanov says Metaboards, developed by world-leading professors from Oxford University, could lead to the mass-adoption of wireless charging as existing Qi-based chargers are severely limited by comparison.
Qi standard chargers, seen in the likes of Apple and Samsung phones, require precise alignment between internal coils inside both the charger and the device. Metaboards鈥� tech, demonstrated recently at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, will charge devices placed casually upon a non-metal surface such as a table.
鈥淲e are addressing a challenge that the wireless charging industry is facing: to improve the user experience,鈥� Ivanov told 老九品茶Cloud. 鈥淥ne charger per device doesn鈥檛 solve anything. It’s ridiculous.
鈥淚t is also limited because they need to be precisely aligned. If you get a message and your phone vibrates, it might stop charging 鈥� and you aren鈥檛 aware that has happened.
鈥淟ooking at my desk at the moment I have a laptop, a phone and a monitor. Other people may have smartwatches, earbuds or games consoles. I want all these things to be charged seamlessly 鈥� that is what is missing for it to be mass-adopted.鈥�
Metaboards uses a dynamic new area of science called metamaterials 鈥� new types of materials made up of compounds such as plastics or metals that are arranged in 鈥榞eometric structures鈥� that have properties not found in nature 鈥� to transmit the charge to devices through the AirFuel standard.
The boards can be any size and fitted underneath worktops, tables or desks. In future it could be incorporated into furniture, should the company gain traction in the marketplace.
Ivanov has signed a contract with one of the biggest smartphone manufacturers to produce a proof-of-concept and hopes to get two more on board by the end of the year.
鈥淚t鈥檚 early days, but I remain cautiously optimistic,鈥� he said. 鈥淚f they like the implementation, they can take a licence to adopt it into their portfolio and that will hopefully result in some production orders for next year.
鈥淎ll whoever makes the charged device needs to do is to put a dual-mode receiver inside which costs $2 extra. Is that $2 a price worth paying for the user experience? That is the question the mobile phone companies have to answer. And it is one consumers will understand.
鈥淎聽Qi聽charger costs 拢25, but a metamaterials base could actually be a lot cheaper because the materials are printed on to PCBs as opposed to what we have in the聽Qi聽chargers, wire coils, which are very, very expensive.鈥�
Ivanov (pictured)聽joined the company in January 2018 having previously been the CEO of Redux, a start-up bought out by Alphabet鈥檚 Google.
鈥淲hen I joined the team was coming out of academia and saying they had this thing working in the lab, but added up it cost 拢4,000, which is completely not viable,鈥� he revealed. 鈥淎nd when you combine things that generate magnetic fields and put them close to electronics, quite a lot of unexpected things happen!
鈥淥ver the last 12 months we have come through that and built prototypes that look like a product which cost less than 拢200. That will come down 鈥� it is not the final cost-optimised version.
鈥淚n academia they develop something that is interesting and the next question they need to answer as a business is ‘how do we make this thing into a product? How do we develop its unique selling point for consumers to buy it?’
鈥淭he challenge for us is to build a product that actually solves a significant problem which people are happy to pay money for. I believe we are doing that.鈥�
Ivanov, also a former CEO of PC security firm BullGuard, says that he received several offers from companies following the sale of Redux 鈥� but Metaboards stood out.
鈥淥ne of them was for a profitable business which required a bit of restructuring. I wanted to get involved with something where I didn’t have to cut costs,鈥� he said.
鈥淭he other company was growing but had market risk as opposed to product risk: they had a product and it was in the market, but I could not see how it would scale and remain a viable business.
鈥淲ith Metaboards, on the other hand, the market was there, the problem was there to be solved 鈥� but it had a technology risk. That’s what people do in tech start-ups, they solve this risk… it’s a lot easier to solve a technology risk than a market risk.鈥�
Working with university spin-outs is a new experience for him. 鈥淲hat gets me out of bed in a morning is getting involved with something where I can have an impact. That’s what I’ve been doing for I don鈥檛 know how many years,鈥� he said.
鈥淚 would not get involved in a company that is just there to maintain the status quo. I might as well retire!
鈥淚 had this vision that we could deliver something that ultimately can change people’s lives. You go on a journey, try your best and if the technology does not get adopted, no harm done. But it鈥檚 important to have a vision and try and make an impact.鈥�