Forget Wall Outlets; Starbucks Is Bringing Wireless Charging To Its Store

Image via Flickr/ CanadaPenguin

Starbucks is looking for the next best thing to give its customers a better coffee experience. Over in Silicon Valley, a tech hub for startups and entrepreneurs, a handful of Starbucks locations are considering inputing portable charging systems in its stores, giving coffee-and-work enthusiasts a place to keep their devices powered without searching for a power outlet.

One Silicon Valley location tested the capability today, using the Duracell Powermat. To charge a phone or tablet, customers simply lay the device on the mat. Daniel Schreiber, president of Powermat Technologies, said that the closer the device is, the more efficient the power transfer will be.

Using wireless charges just as fast as a cable, with no degradation, at all,” Schreiber told ABC News.

Customers are using mobile devices more and more,” said Linda Mills, a spokeswoman for Starbucks.

There will be 10 to 12 wireless charging stations at each participating Starbucks.

Not all phones will work for the Powermat, though; it uses PMA standard to charge its devices, as opposed to the Qi standard—the bulk of products are made with the latter.

Starbucks Chief Digital Officer Adam Brotman said Starbucks believes that it has made the best choice with PTA standard, and hasn’t put consideration into a broader rollout.

It was our first and best guess in terms of the right format,” Brotman told AllThingsD. “It is a great testing partnership, and it could get much bigger than this, but we are going to wait and see how the tests go.”

Although AT&T, parters with the Power Matters Alliance, plans to make its products capable of being charged wirelessly out of the box next year, Menno Treffers, chairman of the Wireless Power Consortium (back the Qi standard), disagrees with Starbucks decision to use the PMA standard.

It does not make business sense for coffee-shops to deploy wireless chargers that are incompatible with the phones and tablets that people carry,” Treffers said in a statement. “Qi is the standard used in all phones and tablets that support wireless charging.”

We are always looking for ways to help our customers recharge, both literally and figuratively,” Adam Brotman, chief digital officer of Starbucks said in a statement. “Wireless charging is not only the most convenient and simple way to recharge a mobile device, but it’s environmentally friendly – so it makes perfect sense for us to be working with the PMA to create a universal standard for wireless charging.”

Schreiber compares the Starbucks rollout of wireless charging to its decision to have Wi-Fi, before it became Wi-fi, in its locations a decade ago.

“Starbucks installed Wi-Fi in their stores when the competing standard was Home RF,” he said. “Starbucks’ decision to make it a public commodity changed the industry.”