This article is premium content. In order to gain access to it please either Log in, Activate your complimentary web account if you are a print subscriber, or Subscribe now
Mobile devices
The trouble with batteries
Jan 6th 2005
From The Economist print edition
“SEAMLESS mobility is here,” trumpet the latest advertisements from Motorola, one of thousands of consumer-electronics companies that converged on Las Vegas this week for the industry's glitzy annual shindig, the Consumer Electronics Show. Like Motorola, many of these companies will be hoping to persuade the show's 130,000 or so attendees that the combination of faster wireless networks, more powerful microchips and better display technology will usher in a new age of dominance for mobile devices. Yet as such devices—which often combine a phone, camera, music player and personal organiser—become more powerful, they are consuming more power. And that is the industry's dirty little secret: battery technology is not keeping pace.
The news that Matsushita, a Japanese consumer-electronics firm, plans to launch a new sort of disposable battery technology (called Oxyride) in America and Europe illustrates the point. Matsushita's engineers have spent eight years working on their new battery, yet it lasts only 50% longer than an ordinary disposable battery. The technology behind the rechargeable lithium-ion and lithium-polymer batteries that power mobile phones and laptops is not evolving much more speedily. According to unpublished research by the Boston Consulting Group, the amount of energy that a battery can store (its energy density) is growing by 8% a year. Mobile-device power consumption, meanwhile, is growing at more than three times this rate, as backlit colour screens, high-speed wireless networks and more powerful microprocessors draw ever-larger amounts of power.
…
If you hold unused Pay Per View credits, or you already have an active subscription, please log in to view the article:
