Starbucks Begins Deployment of 100,000 Wireless Smartphone Charging Stations to Its Stores

Starbucks has announced that they've begun a national rollout of Duracell Powermat wireless charging stations to its stores, beginning with the San Francisco Bay Area. The companies will expand Powermat to additional major markets in 2015, with a full national rollout in Starbucks company-operated stores and Teavana Fine Teas + Tea Bars planned over time. Initial pilots in Europe and Asia are expected within the year.

Stores will be equipped with 'Powermat Spots' - designated areas on tables and counters where customers can place their compatible device and charge wirelessly. Select Starbucks stores in Boston and San Jose offer Powermat today and the broader rollout can be tracked at www.powermat.com/locations.

“Powermat Spots in Starbucks are the result of almost a decade of scientific research spanning material sciences, magnetic induction and mesh networking,” said Ran Poliakine, CEO of Powermat Technologies. “The two-pronged power-plug dates back to the era of the horse drawn carriage, so that today’s announcement marks the first meaningful upgrade to the way we access power in well over a century.”


In the world of wireless charging, “Starbucks is the biggest deployment, period,” Daniel Schreiber, president of Powermat Technologies, said in an interview. “We are talking about 100,000 Powermat spots being deployed by Starbucks” eventually, with an average of 13 to 14 Powermat charging spots per store, he said.

Powermat Spots comply with the open standard set by the PMA – whose members include AT&T, Blackberry, HTC, Huawei, LG, Microsoft, Qualcomm, Samsung, TI and ZTE – resulting in a growing universe of devices and accessories that will charge seamlessly in Starbucks.

The iPhone 6 has been rumored to support wireless charging; however, there's no indication yet of which charging standard Apple has chosen. Recently, the Alliance for Wireless Power (A4WP) and the Power Matters Alliance (PMA) agreed to make sure that if a device works on one standard, that it will work on the other.

You can get cases for your current iPhone that enable wireless charging for around $35 on Amazon.