Increased market share of mobile rapid charging

4th December 2015

Jordan Mulcare

0 0

Whitepaper

Dialog Semiconductor has announced that one of its advanced power management chipsets is at the heart of Samsung’s latest Adaptive Fast Charging (AFC) AC/DC wall adapter. The custom chipset incorporates Samsung’s proprietary AFC technology. The design win builds upon Dialog’s estimated 70% market share of the rapid charging adapter market for smartphones, tablet and other mobile devices.

The small, lightweight Samsung adapter has a USB output connector and is designed for use with the Galaxy S6, Galaxy Note 4 and later models of the Galaxy S and Galaxy Note series smartphones. It typically charges the batteries from 0 to 50% in 30 minutes. The power supply can also charge other devices over a micro-USB cable, delivering 5 volts at up to 2 amps.

Analyst IDC predicts smartphone shipments will reach 1.44bn units in 2015, growing to 1.9bn units by 2019. According to the analyst, Samsung held a market-leading 21.4% share of the smartphone market in Q2/2015. Smartphones are often sold together with AC/DC adapters but there is also a growing market for standalone adapters that can be used to charge a variety of devices over USB.

“Dialog’s rapid charge solutions have continued to gain traction in the mobile market, with our latest Samsung success solidifying Dialog’s leadership position,” said Davin Lee, Senior Vice President of the Power Conversion Business Group, Dialog Semiconductor. “Our solutions offer best in class efficiency, total solution size, performance and cost while delivering valuable competitive advantages to an innovation leader such as Samsung.”

Three complementary Dialog power management devices are used in the adapter. The iW1780 primary-side digital controller incorporates Dialog’s patented SmartDefender advanced hiccup technology, preventing excessive heat build-up and damage when soft short circuits occur in the charger cable or connectors.

This results in safer, more reliable rapid charging. The iW627 secondary-side regulator communicates with the iW1780 AC/DC controller to determine the optimum voltage/current at every point in the charging cycle. Finally, the iW671 synchronous rectifier replaces the secondary-side Schottky diode of a conventional design with a MOSFET and uses proprietary adaptive turn-off technology to boost efficiency to over 88%, reducing the heat generated within the adapter and enabling a smaller case to be used.