NEW YORK-In the last seven years, semiconductor processing capacity has increased by about 2,600 percent while battery technology has improved by approximately 65 percent on a watts basis, said Phillip Redman, program manager, wireless/mobile communications for The Yankee Group, Boston.
Moore’s Law, which says the capacity of computer chips of a given size and price doubles every 18 months, obviously does not apply to advances in power sources for portable devices, he added.
“It doesn’t matter how good a network is or its services are if the battery goes dead or needs to be recharged too often,” Redman said. “And there is not really a lot of hope in the future because there is not as much research in batteries as in semiconductors.”
Gains and losses
The Holy Grail for the cellular telephone industry remains as elusive today as it was more than a decade ago, said Steve Oaks, director of product marketing for iGo Corp., Reno, Nev., formerly known as 1-800-Batteries.
“When I got into the industry 13 to 14 years ago, cellular carriers were asking, `What if you could get a cell phone to last three to four weeks, as long as a pager?’ Paging was growing by leaps and bounds, and it still is growing,” he said.
“Nothing has really changed because the more energy density you get in a battery, the more the (handset) manufacturer can consume it with additional features. Five years ago, there were no smart phones. In 2000, Internet phones will become widespread.”
The biggest gains over the last decade have been made in obtaining equal power output from lighter and smaller batteries and extending both standby times and the useful life of batteries.
“We can provide solutions for lighter weight or more energy, but we can’t give you both at the same time,” Oaks said.
Dora Fong, a battery industry analyst for Frost & Sullivan, San Antonio, concurred that “current battery chemistries have reached their peak in their capabilities.”
However, she added that improvements in energy capacity are on the immediate horizon in the form of lithium-ion polymer rechargeables and zinc-air disposables.
“With the differing shapes and sizes of devices entering the market, vendors must decide which battery chemistries and cells to invest time and funds in to maintain the highest profit margin possible,” she said.
Executives of two handset companies also offered a rosier scenario for a closer match between power demands and output.
While The Yankee Group’s Redman expressed concern about the way semiconductor processing has outstripped battery energy advances, Jorma Ollila, chairman and chief executive officer of Nokia Corp., holds a different view.
“Batteries are not so much of a problem as is getting software and applications into the handsets,” he said.
Similarly, Danny McGuire, vice president of CDMA sales for Audiovox Corp., said he feels fairly comfortable because of a combination of advances: in power output on the battery side; in greater efficiencies in energy use on the handset and network ends; and advances in smarter chargers that prevent overcharging and fully depleting a battery before recharging it.
“On the battery side, energy density, or content, continues to increase,” said Mark Hoersten, manager of the telecom products business unit of Cleveland-based Keithley Instruments. The company provides handset manufacturers with software that simulates the characteristics of batteries inside phones.
“On the semiconductor side, manufacturers are driving down the voltage platforms phones run off, so they’re squeaking more out of smaller batteries. It was 7.2, is now 3.6 and 1.8 is coming,”
However, the overarching lesson is that solutions to one problem can engender their own set of new problems. Carriers like digital wireless technology in part because it uses less power than analog, which is more or less always on as it transmits communications in a continuous fashion while the end user moves from one cell site to another.
By comparison, Global System for Mobile communications “uses a low-level protocol to communicate over the airwaves using packetized bursts that last less than 600 microseconds each,” he added.
That is akin to driving a fuel-efficient car in a way that wastes gasoline.
“Cellular phones place pretty unique demands on batteries, similar to stop-and-go driving,” Hoersten said.
Advances in semiconductors impact microprocessors used for battery current control, said William McLaughlin, a patent attorney with the Chicago law firm of Wood Phillips. Whether placed inside the battery case or the phone itself, these chips place handsets that are turned on but not in use into a resting state akin to the sleep mode for computers. However, what they cannot do is increase the energy density of the batteries.
However, there are new ways available for handsets to take advantage of a battery’s full energy potential, said Mark Horne, marketing director for Enrev Corp., formerly called Advanced Charger Technology Inc. Offering another analogy to the automotive industry, he likened a battery’s energy capacity to the gasoline holding space inside a car’s fuel tank.
“A normal gas tank gets smaller over time because of a crystalline build-up inside. As a result, even if you do a good job of energy management, [the tank’s] capacity decreases,” he said.
“Because there really have been no advances in battery technology in 30 years, we have developed a software algorithm to keep the fuel storage as clean as possible.”
Lithium-ion batteries, which retain about 70 percent of their capacity after a year of use, represent an improvement in this respect over nickel metal-hydride and nickel-cadmium batteries, Horne added.
“The lithium-ion war (against nickel metal-hydride) is just about over. LiOn already is primary in Asia and Europe,” Oaks of iGo said.
“Originally, LiOn found the greatest need in notebook computers because Pentium processors, larger screens and wireless modems increased power needs. LiOn answered the problem without more weight.”
During the past several years, battery cell manufacturers took note of the far larger and faster-growing cellular phone market and then had to figure out “how to get production up and costs down,” he said.
Down the road
Last year, cellular phones consumed 46.7 million cells, or 59.3 percent of the rechargeable batteries sold worldwide, according to Frost & Sullivan. By year-end, the research firm expects that figure to have risen to 69.6 million, representing a 59.5 percent share. By the end of next year, mobile handsets will account for the purchase of 76.4 million rechargeable batteries, or 60.6 percent of the total, according to its projections.
Lithium-ions and nickel metal-hydrides were in a virtual dead heat last year, with the former taking a 28.5-percent share and the latter, 28.1 percent. Frost & Sullivan expects Li-Ions to close out 1999 with a 34.1-percent share to NiMH’s 25.5 percent. That trend likely will continue next year, with lithium-ion batteries gaining 38.8 percent of the overall market for rechargeables, while NiMH batteries drop to 22.9 percent.
Major players in lithium-ion battery production include Sony Corp., Toshiba Corp., Sanyo Electric Co., NEC Moli energy, Matsushita Battery Industrial Co. Ltd./Panasonic and Japan Storage Battery, said Fong of Frost & Sullivan.
McGuire of Audiovox said he is awaiting word from Toshiba about its plans for an enhanced Li-Ion battery, which will represent an advance to three-dimensional layers from two-dimensional layers inside the cell.
“That is a step between lithium-ion and lithium-polymer; it allows the cells to be smaller but give enhanced talk and standby time,” he said.
Lithium-ion polymer technology is the buzz word for the near future
. However, Horne of Enrev said its main advantage is a more flexible form factor rather than greater energy density.
At four millimeters in thickness, Li-I
on polymer provides the same energy output as Li-Ion technology, iGo’s Oaks said. However, at thinner dimensions, lithium-ion polymer offers a power output advantage. The polymer version also lasts longer, he added.
“Lithium polymer is significantly lighter and offers more power, but it also is three times more expensive than lithium-ion,” Nokia’s Ollila said.
Oaks said he believes battery history will repeat itself, with owners of “$2,000 notebook (computers) and $1,000 [personal digital assistants]” being the early adapters who will drive the mass market. He expects to see a noticeable uptick in the number of these batteries sold for these devices during the second half of next year.
Wild cards
The wild card, however, is the smart wireless phone. Oaks and McGuire said the speed at which these mobile handsets proliferate and the degree to which their users are willing to buy best-of-breed batteries could well determine how fast lithium-ion polymer cells become cheaper, mass-market items.
Major players in lithium-ion polymer technology for wireless devices are some of the same names in Li-Ion, Fong of Frost & Sullivan said: MBI/Panasonic, Sony, Sanyo, Toshiba, as well as Maxell. Several other companies also are developing this technology, she said.
Earlier this fall, for example, Lithium Technology Corp. of Plymouth Meeting, Pa., and Pacific Lithium Ltd. of Auckland, New Zealand, announced plans to merge and manufacture lithium-ion polymer batteries in the United States. Their first target is the portable computer market.
“The primary focus in this sector currently is on who can get production up and running after thoroughly testing the capabilities of this type of technology,” Fong said.
“The companies that can meet this goal would become the ultimate leaders in the Li-Ion polymer market.”
