Cota Wireless Power Solution Empowers Brick and Mortars to Compete with e-Commerce Price Agility

Ossia announces that its flagship wireless power technology, Cota, enabled the delivery of over 16,000 ESL updates in 16 days, outperforming any commercially available battery-powered ESL.

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Ossia

Nov 11, 2021, 09:02 ET

REDMOND, Wash., Nov. 11, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Ossia Inc., the company that created Cota® Real Wireless Power™ — the patented technology that delivers power over-the-air, at a distance, and without the need for line-of-sight — today announced that through the integration of Cota into multiple electronic shelf labels (ESLs), each batteryless device was able to successfully deliver 16,000 updates in 16 days. Commercially available battery-powered ESLs are limited in the number of updates they can execute, due to battery constraints.

This test was executed to prove the theory that wireless power could outperform the disposable battery-operated devices, such as ESLs and other IoT devices, and help brick and mortar stores combat e-commerce. This is a first: no other battery or wireless power technology has achieved this.

"Online retailers have the technology available to leverage artificial intelligence and analytics software to instantly adjust pricing, promotions, and more based on supply and demand," says Doug Stovall, CEO of Ossia. "Brick and mortar retailers are slower to respond to price and promotion opportunities because they are either using printed shelf labels, and it takes a lot of labor to change out those displays, or they are using battery-operated ESL's that would require frequent battery changes to cope with high volatility price items. We set out to prove that wireless power over air could change all that."

The Cota system was checked for stability, resilience and scalability in the ESL environment. The 16,000 updates milestone is an indication that Cota can continually enable unlimited updates. These updates offer opportunities to grow revenue by increasing price agility and customer engagement and becoming more competitive with e-commerce. Stores could also take deeper advantage of their price analytics systems.

"Imagine freeing up your employees from tedious in-store signage and pricing tasks to better serve customers. With unlimited updates, a retailer can provide near real-time alignment to pricing on their website, star rating reviews, QR codes for recipes, nutritional facts, instructions, region of origination and more," says Stovall. "Online and in-store pricing disparities — even within the same company — would decrease, and employees could spend more time with value-add activities."

The wirelessly powered ESL system is an example of a high volume, in-store IoT use case, but the rapid updates could be applied to a variety of environments, from commercial to industrial to medical, that have multiple display form factors. This level of quantity or frequency of updates of a multi-device system would never be possible with disposable batteries. It also provides an opportunity for wireless power as a service (WPaaS).

The Cota test showcases the world's first wirelessly powered ESL capable of executing more image and data updates (without any maintenance) than any commercially available battery-powered ESL or IoT.

About Ossia
Ossia Inc. is leading the world on what is possible with wireless power. Ossia's flagship Cota® technology redefines wireless power by safely delivering remote, targeted energy to devices at a distance. Ossia's Cota technology is a patented smart antenna technology that automatically keeps multiple devices charged without any user intervention and enables an efficient and truly wire-free, powered-up world that is always on and always connected. Ossia is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington. Visit our website at www.ossia.com.