“Apple is unlikely to keep the development of wireless recharging technology in New Zealand after buying Auckland firm PowerbyProxi, Graeme Muller, the chief executive of technology industry body NZTech forecasts,” Ellen Read and Tom Pullar-Strecker report for Stuff.co.nz. “Muller said his gut feel was that wireless charging could become ubiquitous in Apple devices within a generation and it would become one of those little-known facts that the technology originated in New Zealand. ”
Apple “announced on Wednesday that it had bought PowerbyProxi for an undisclosed sum,” Read and Pullar-Strecker report. “It confirmed plans to keep the business in New Zealand. Auckland entrepreneur Fady Mishriki set up PowerbyProxi in 2007, as a spin-out from Auckland University, with the goal of helping people charge everyday devices such as mobile phones without having to plug them in.”
“The company now employs about 55 staff and holds more than 300 patents relating to wireless charging,” Read and Pullar-Strecker report. “Shareholders contacted have so far remained silent on what Apple paid for the business… Based on the price paid for the company’s shares by earlier investors, the price paid by Apple appears likely to be at least in the high tens of millions and could be into 10-figures. Apple senior vice president of hardware engineering Dan Riccio said Powerbyproxi’s team would be ‘a great addition as Apple works to create a wireless future… We want to bring truly effortless charging to more places and more customers around the world.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Congrats to PowerbyProxi founders and investors!
Note also the vehicle connection:
Cool. Not Tesla transmitted cool. But still cool.
I want to move to New Zealand first of all to meet Lorde, and secondarily to evade a nuclear war between Korea and the U.S. I know that sounds foolish, but I’ve always been prone to foolishness. You should try it. Foolishness laughs in the face of failure. If we must die, die laughing.
At last someone who understands the standard of World politics these days.
I am not worried about nuclear war at this point. Kim Jong Un values himself too highly to risk being vaporized. The people at the top – whether in a democracy, theocracy, or totalitarian state – want to live to enjoy the power and wealth that they have amassed. That a key reason why the young and less powerful tend to pay the price of war and get strapped into suicide vests.
I would like to live in New Zealand for an extended period simply because it seems like a really nice place to spend my last couple or few decades.
Nice thought, Herself, but if there’s a major global nuclear war, all we’ll have down here is a little longer to contemplate our impending irradiated death.
And on that cheerful note……….
I did notice the boat they showed in that had an uncanny similarity to SJ’s yacht.