Excellent Growth in Qi Wireless Charging Bucks the Trend in a Smartphone Market in Decline

Strategy Analytics finds that the convenience of Qi wireless charging is resonating with consumers and a range of consumer electronics vendors that are eager to add this desirable feature to their products. Indeed, Qi continued its forward march in 2019, growing wholesale shipments of Qi-enabled devices 27% year-on-year (RX+TX) amid an overall smartphone market that contracted 1.3% in the same period.

Smartphone charging remains the key driver of Qi’s continued growth in both RX (receivers) and TX (transmitters) as the world’s top handset OEM’s drive Qi further into their portfolios. Apple, Samsung, Huawei, Xiaomi and LG topped the list of vendors in 2019 shipping Qi-certified smartphone volumes, knowing wireless charging will in time become a customer expectation. Overall, the smartphone industry and related accessories vendors shipped nearly 338M RX devices in 2019.

On the TX side, Strategy Analytics estimates 127M Qi-certified wireless charging TX devices shipped globally in 2019, up nearly 57% from 81M in 2018. Over 104M Residential Qi chargers bought with phones or sold separately in 2019 accounted for nearly 82% of all TX in 2019. Moreover, in 2019 Automotive Qi TX hardware sales of 21.5M grew nearly 60% year-on-year as automotive OEM’s cautiously implemented embedded Qi wireless charging into their roadmaps and sales of after-market chargers remained robust.

Despite a dismal short term outlook for mobile phones driven by a global pandemic, the outlook for wireless charging remains bight and Strategy Analytics’ Emerging Device Technologies service (EDT) forecasts that nearly 45% of smartphones shipped globally in 2024 will feature wireless charging.

Moreover, as “truly wireless earbuds” started to embrace Qi in charging cases last year, adding wearables to the mix added another 1.25M units to the total from a device category that grew over 200% in 2019 and is set for strong growth moving forward.

Feel free to message me to learn more, and check out the Wireless Power Consortium's website at www.wirelesspowerconsortium.com where this blog first appeared.