The shares of Energous, a company that develops long-range RF-based charging technology under the name “WattUp”, have almost doubled today, apparently driven by a Bloomberg report this morning indicating that Apple is working on a MagSafe battery for its iPhone 12 line. The story started earlier this week when MacRumors contributor Steve Moser discovered a non-specific reference to an iPhone “battery” in the beta version of iOS 14.5.
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According to a report this morning of CNA Finance, investors are betting on new rumors that Energous and Apple are working together on wireless charging, based on a “previously overlooked SEC document”. The report was captured by several financial news outlets, including The street and Fetching Alpha.
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Leaving aside the fact that Apple’s MagSafe inductive wireless charging depends on a different technology than the RF system being developed by Energous, there is another problem with the rumor today, and that is the apparently concerned documents that mention ” Apple’s compliance tests “for WattUp technology were archived in 2013 and 2014 and were widely covered by the media in 2016. The last time an SEC lawsuit from Energous mentioned Apple was in December 2014.
There was a spate of interest at Energous in 2016 and 2017 amid rumors of a partnership with Apple, but that speculation died quickly and things went quiet for several years. Energous continued to develop its long-range charging technology, working with Dialog Semiconductor on the transmitter and receiver hardware, but so far deploying only in a few niche applications, such as horse health monitoring.