Wireless charging technology has been around since Nikola Tesla came up with the idea. In that sense, Finland startup PowerKiss is no different. Put the receiver (the Ring) into your phone and then place it on top of the power transmitter (the Heart) which is designed to be attached or built into furniture.
But unlike Powermat, which markets itself as an end-to-end solution that you buy for yourself and keep in your home, the folks at PowerKiss are marketing themselves to cafes, hotels, and airline lounges as a service that they can offer their customers. Power as a service, elegant battery top-up as a value add.
The idea is that the traveler borrows a receiver from the business when they walk in (the receivers cost about 10 EUR each) and plugs it into their mobile device and places it on a table that has the transmitter built in. No wires to trip up other customers, no crouching around looking for a spare outlet.
Clean, elegant, utterly Finnish. The PowerKiss chargers currently support Nokia phone 2mm jack, the microUSB, and the iPhone/iPad format too. Their site also says they have a laptop charger in the works.
Launched last year, the company now has 15 employees in Helsinki situated in the Aalto design factory. Here’s a video interview with the founder, Maija Itkonen.
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