Wireless charging or induced charging works similarly to the way an induction cooker works, i.e., electro-magnetic induction. The only difference, of course, is that you don’t cook the device you’re charging.
If you were wondering how the cooker works, it’s like this: basically you have the “stove” through which electric current runs in a coil. On top of that you place a metallic utensil, like a cooking vessel. The current in the stove induces, via electromagnetic interactions, electric eddy currents in the utensil. This causes the vessel to heat up and cook your food pretty efficiently.
Now charging works in a similar way. You have a “base station”, just like the ones used for charging cordless landline phones. However, instead of plugging into the device you want to charge, there’s a current induced to a coil in the device, which reconverts the magnetic field generated by the base station into electricity. The coil is a thin electrically conducting wire, so there’s a normal current generated instead of an eddy current. The reasons for this are a matter of physics and are well known and documented.
So, why are companies and organisations pushing the technology? Mainly for consumer convenience, and of course, to sell more products, since they can introduce wireless charging as a feature. Just put your mobile device on a charging mat, and it’ll do the rest. No wires, no plugging in or unplugging of wires and connectors.
Currently, we have the Wireless Power Consortium (WPC) and their Qi standard for low-power charging using magnetic induction, the Alliance for Wireless Power (A4WP) founded recently by Samsung and Qualcomm and the IEEE Power Matters Alliance (PMA).
A4WP wants to create wireless charging technology that’ll work through non-metallic surfaces, so that, in theory, your car’s dashboard could act as a charging point for your phone. The PMA on the other hand has actually created something called the Wireless Charging Card (WiCC), a thin memory card-like thing that sits between the battery cover and the battery of your phone or other mobile device. The WiCC also doubles up as a Near-field Communication antenna that allows data transfer between devices.
There have been many companies that have explored wireless charging in the past, often with mixed results. But it seems to be picking up, especially since LG and Samsung are incorporating this technology into the Optimus LTE2 and Galaxy S III, respectively.