Intel Uses CES Asia To Announce Wireless Power Partnership With Haier

Three areas are shaping the CE industry for the next five to 10 years, said Skaugen: innovation in personal computing; creating new technology experiences by eliminating wiring and passwords; and buildout of the IoT. Skaugen cited the 50 billion connected devices expected to be in the market by 2020 where anything that can be made to compute and connect “will do so.” The results will benefit users’ lifestyle, health, safety and “many unimagined results,” while creating volumes of cloud-based data, he said.

Citing the 50-year-anniversary of Moore’s Law, Skaugen put into perspective the pace of innovation in computing versus other industries. If the same pace applied to cars, people would be able to drive their cars on four liters of gas for the entire period they own their car, he posited. In space travel, rocketing to the moon and back would take a minute, and a jet ride from Shanghai to New York would take less than 30 seconds, he said.

Intel’s version of “cord-cutting” means cutting out cords altogether, said Skaugen, citing the Rezence wireless charging standard and proximity-based peripheral syncing that will cut the cord between a monitor and a PC. This wire-free computing, based on WiGig, enables monitors to start up automatically when in proximity to a PC, he said. Intel smart docking technology will enable laptops to connect automatically to peripherals without HDMI or DisplayPort cables while delivering USB 3.0 transfer speeds, he said.

Intel’s vision by 2016, said Skaugen, is to “eliminate all wires from computing,” and that includes charging cables, data transfer and HDMI cables for convenience and e-waste reasons. He said attendees in the room, like most consumers, carry on average six wires per person for their various technology needs, he said, and there are 17,000 metric tons of cables in Shanghai, the world’s most populated city. “Imagine that in a landfill,” he said. On a lifestyle basis, wires add inconvenience and weight to consumers’ lives, he said.

To eliminate cords from charging, Intel backs the Rezence wireless charging standard from the Alliance for Wireless Power (A4WP). At CES Asia, Intel announced a partnership with Haier to bring wireless power with Haier to “homes, restaurants, cafes and eventually airports and planes beginning later this year.”

Skaugen compared Intel’s effort with Rezence to Intel’s Centrino, which eliminated the ethernet cable from the computing experience by making notebooks wireless. “Our job is to start with PCs, tablets, phones and wearables and make a single technology that scales from wearables all the way to PCs,” he said. The vision is for the technology to be embedded at Starbucks, in airport lounges, on airplanes so people can wirelessly charge their devices, he said.

Intel is working with DuPont on wireless charging countertops “so your next-generation home countertops will be wireless charging-ready,” and it's working with Hilton and Marriott hotels so they’re equipped for wireless charging, said Skaugen. The company is also working with Emirates airline on embedding the technology in seat-back tables “to drive a clutter-free world,” and it’s teaming with Jaguar Land Rover so consumers can charge their phones and other devices while in their cars.

Skaugen’s associate, identified as Craig, demonstrated a transmitter -- with a price of roughly $50 -- that could be mounted under a table where it transmitted power through a surface 5mm thick. He called it an “extremely easy and extremely inexpensive” implementation. He said magnetic resonance doesn’t use induction so there’s no heat generated in the power transfer, so it can be installed “in a lot of places that we normally wouldn’t be able to like coffee shops, airplanes, public places and automobiles." He highlighted the “spatial freedom” of Rezence charging so charging could take place without precise alignment and with multiple devices. “I don’t have to do one transmitter to one device,” he said.

“That’s why Intel is committed to A4WP as a standard,” said Skaugen, because “you don’t need to exactly place your device and you can have multiple devices.” Craig demonstrated a smartphone case Intel retrofitted with wireless charging receivers from the three wireless charging standards: Qi, Powermat and Rezence. Intel integrated the three into one platform “to show our developers that this is something they can provide to their customers,” Craig said. While the Rezence and Powermat chargers immediately began charging the smartphone case, the Qi pod, which required more precise placement, took a little longer to sync with the smartphone case as he lined up the charging elements. Skaugen referred to Qi, Rezence’s competitor with the largest installed base of wireless charging devices, as “finicky.”

Unlike the “waterfall” effect of PC technologies cascading down into tablets and smartphones, wireless charging is on the opposite trajectory, said Craig. “We want to take the power all the way to an envelope that’s going to be able to charge our laptops, PCs and 2-in-1 devices.”

In other technologies, Skaugen demo’d a next-gen “selfie stick” holding six GoPro 4K cameras and spoke of immersive experiences driving innovation that will play out in video production, content sharing and gaming. Digital filming in 360-degree capture will extend to the prosumer and consumer markets “overnight,” he said, referencing applications in real estate and tourism on the commercial side.

In gaming, Skaugen spoke of PC gaming having become a professional sport drawing “massive crowds” worldwide. Intel’s Extreme Masters tournament in Poland brings “tens of thousands” of fans into gaming stadiums, where participants enter in team sweaters and the crowd cheers and does the “wave” similar to U.S. fans at sporting events. There’s talk in China about creating the first stadiums specifically for PC gaming, he said. Intel sponsors Extreme Masters, where top gaming teams compete to be champions, and the tournament for season 10 will be in Shenzhen, China, in July at a cartoon and animation festival, he said.

Skaugen demonstrated an all-in-one PC (AIO) with a 4K display and 10-point touch system. The latter allows several people to touch a screen at once to play electronic board games such as Scrabble or mahjong. He demonstrated a concept platform with a 19 ½-inch Lenovo AIO, based on a sixth-generation Intel Core processor. The unit has wireless surround sound and an embedded Intel RealSense 3D camera. Joking with the audience, he held the nearly 20-inch device to his ear and said, “I know you in China like big phones so if you want to use it as a phone you can do that as well.” The 10-point touch screen, made possible by Windows 10, allows people on all four sides of the display to participate as a group, and he called the multitouch functionality for digital board games a way to “bring the family back together.” Price, he said, is roughly $749.

The Intel executive held up several 2-in-1 and convertible 2-in-1 PCs to demonstrate how much thinner, lighter and more powerful they are than a four-year-old laptop. He also previewed a Windows 10-based device -- billed as a combination PC, 2-in-one and tablet -- that’s due out later this year. Separating the keyboard from the unit in laptop mode gives users the choice to be in tablet mode and then all applications go full screen to make it a more touch-friendly interface when on the go. When the tablet is attached again, the device reverts to a laptop experience.

Of the 46 million mobile devices that Intel shipped last year, 43 percent came from Chinese companies, said Skaugen. He said some reference designs coming out are as large as seven inches.

Intel has interviewed more than 50,000 consumers to find out what they want from computing devices, said Skaugen. Consumers have a “strong desire” to do three things, he said, including interacting “more naturally” with their devices. Instead of keyboards and mice, “it would be nice to just talk and gesture to our computers,” he said. Consumers also want to eliminate wires and passwords, while making their lives more secure, he said.

Intel is working on new ways to interact with mobile devices including a facial or iris scan as a way to log in to a PC, said Skaugen. With an Intel presenter, Skaugen showed how a user can use “hover” technology to move a cursor by holding a finger close to a display without actually touching it. The application was a cooking scenario where a user wouldn’t want to touch a screen with messy hands while reading a recipe from a tablet and preparing a meal.