Portable Power Conference and Expo
September 12-14, 2004

Background

The Portable Power Conference, held this year in San Francisco, California, at the Argent Hotel, has been an annual event for the last ten years. It is produced by TIAX (www.tiax.biz) and IDG (www.idgworldexpo.com). A main objective is to bring together the people in several industries who determine the solutions to power in portable products. This conference continues to take on greater significance each year because increasingly the answer to portable power is becoming a much wider ranging, collective and collaborative problem. At the moment, the potential for new features, capabilities, and functionality in portable devices outstrips the ability to power them in consumer friendly ways. This puts a major obstacle in growth plans for portable device makers. The crux of the issue facing the industry is that energy demand is far greater than battery technology alone can provide, and beyond the best efforts of power management which has been able to make up for the shortfall the last few years.

The new solutions apparently are going to have to be much more widely based, multi-discipline, collaborative and very innovative. It will involve the full hierarchy that plays a part in bringing energy to the end product running from material technologies, components, products, systems and infrastructure.

Among the group of practitioners at this conference are battery manufacturers, fuel cell developers, engineers in power conversion devices, EE’s in power management semiconductors, component designers, and portable product OEMs. This Conference is unique in this holistic approach to the issue of portable power, but this accurately reflects the reality of the main issue facing the portable product industry. So, it provides a timely and needed nexus.

From a historical perspective, the portable device market really took off and became an industry unto itself during the 1990s with the advent of portable computers and cellphones. Portable computers went from a separate, barely manageable, piece of luggage to a drop-in article for a brief case and backpack. The cellphone followed a similar path. In 1983 a brick-sized phone was used to make the first call, and when we see 1980 circa movies with these devices (typically used as a status symbol) they seem amusing relics. Both of these products owe a major portion of their success to radical improvements in battery technology. Today, portable products are again at a market juncture. Opportunities for new products, services and markets exist, but only if they can meet consumers raised sense of sensibilities on form factor, ergonomics and convenience. However, this time around, the solution to the energy problem is at a different order of complexity. There is no equivalent Li-ion waiting in the wings.

The conference consisted of presentations, panel discussions, and a vendor exhibition area. The planning of the conference, the venue, the logistics, and speaker lineup were exceptional. It was an excellent opportunity to meet a cross section of people in this industry and develop an appreciation for the issues in a short period of time. The lunches and evening cocktail receptions all worked together to allow attendees to see vendor exhibits, meet colleagues, talk to presenters, and make new contacts. About 400 people and 25 exhibiting vendors attended.

Pre-conference Tutorials

There were several pre-conference tutorials that were useful for getting up to speed on various topics: Li-ion update, fuel cell technology, smart battery technology, user interfaces, and AC/DC power budgets.

The Li-ion update gave a comprehensive and well-organized dissection of the complex science of cell development, providing an overview of the base technology. In addition, an abundance of material was provided allowing one to pursue topics of individual interest with the desired degree of detail. For example, topics included status of new cathode materials, LiMPO4 type, Ni-based oxides and Mn spinel; transition from LiCoO2 to Li(Ni-Mn-Co)O2 to reduce Co cost; instrumentation and modeling tools for safety analysis and characterization.

The fuel cell technology program looked at the decision branches underlying current development efforts – active versus passive; neat, diluted and reformed fuels; FC only versus hybrid. Examples of fuel cell hardware by various companies illustrated the state-of-the-art and design direction. Ball Aerospace 20W direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) for the army; Toshiba’s 0.1W DMFC for cellphones, 1W for portable devices and 13W for laptops computers. MTI’s DMFC-battery hybrid for handheld devices.

The user interface session provided a look at the latest developments in advanced displays, voice I/O, pointing devices, and biometrics. Microprocessor history has been described as having three ages: Mainframe (one computer/many people) PC Age (one computer/person) and “Ubicomp” Age (many computers/person). Since I/O goes hand in hand with microprocessors, its considerations likewise have grown in significance. For power people, displays represent a significant amount of the energy budget. So Intel’s Mobile Platform Group represented by Jennifer Colegrove was a font of information on power usage of displays, from watches to laptops. OLEDs represent a hopeful path but degradation and cost are still issues. Another Intel contributor, Kamal Shah, focuses on making mobile PCs last all day. In that effort, one of his tasks is chair of the Mobile PC Extended Battery Life Working Group (www.eblwg.com).

It may surprise you that Microsoft is the major player in the field of speech recognition. They have assembled a staff of the top people in the field and backed them with over $1 billion. Hussein Kanji of Microsoft provided insight into the drivers behind Microsoft’s investment. For starters, one consideration is that in many environments, hands and eyes are busy, and conventional input/output devices are awkward and power consuming. All phone transactions and many in-car activities cover two huge user universes. Less obvious but perhaps more far reaching is the fact that some major languages (think Chinese) lend themselves to speech input as opposed to manipulation of visual characters. Using Percent Machine Error Rate as a metric of progress, there is an encouraging trend line that goes from 25% to 5% during Microsoft’s development history begun in 1993. In 2007, speech is expected to play a key part in Windows. You might want to try out for yourself where the technology is today. If you have Windows XP, go to Control Panel, click the Speech icon and explore the Speech Recognition and Text-to-Speech tabs.

Main Conference Topics

I have organized the information from the various keynotes, feature presentations, talks, and exhibitions into several main topics: status of the rechargeable battery business, battery R&D, small fuel cell and alternate power development, power management trends, and portable product development news. Following is my summary on these topics.

Status of the Rechargeable Battery Business

Hideo Takeshita, vice president of the Institute of Information Technology Japan, has established himself as an institution and utility for those who need to closely monitor the immediate pulse of the rechargeable battery business. He slices and dices his extensive data into myriad looks at the business. Sales by chemistry, size, manufacturer, and application are examined from all angles. Here are some key points to take away this year. The 8% increase in cobalt prices are making manufacturers take action to maintain margins, e.g., switching from LiCoO to lower cost alternatives. Sales for 2004 were good, continuing the 11% growth rate of the last four years. However, the projection for 2005 brings that trend to an end. Why? Fundamentals underlying the drop seem to be that high penetration rates have already been achieved in major portable product markets and improved battery performance and quality has reduced battery replacement frequency. With regard to company leadership, Sanyo maintains its top market share followed by Sony and then a cluster of followers – MBI, SDI, BYD, and LG Chemical. The average cell price is at ~$2.66 leveling from the steeply declining curve of the past. There is still overcapacity in this market. The migration of production to China is still continuing and the contest remains among Japan, Korea, and China. The major OEM battery users are Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, Sony, Dell, and HP. The major applications are notebooks and phones. Digital video, audio, and PDAs represent the next largest device grouping. The best opportunity for major growth for the battery industry may be coming from an entirely different sector than portable products – transportation. Motor assisted bicycles, electric scooters and hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) may offer the rechargeable battery industry a whole new sector to develop. Toyota is one auto company that is developing Li-ion batteries internally. Sanyo is heavily involved with NiMH for HEVs.

In factoring the long-term direction of the portable battery business, I think three salient forces need to be considered as main drivers: Japanese companies dominate the industry with several large consumer electronic companies vertically integrated in battery technology, a major boost in energy density for portable devices does not appear anywhere on the horizon so Li-ion technology looks like a safe manufacturing bet for a VERY long time to come, and Chinese manufacturing seems to offer the least cost globally for mature battery products.