Hacker News Reader

Comment by conkrete | Hacker News Reader

Panasonic would NOT pay additional money in licensing to make less money by having their batteries last longer.

Large companies like this make sure the batteries they use aren't interchangable or standardized. They certainly don't want to make batteries that you wouldn't want to replace.

If you look at profit analysis of almost any product (like a panasonic camera), the profit margins are all in the accessories, like batteries.

View on HN

Go for Apple then, custom batteries, not user-replaceable, not retailed. They'll sign you a check for $10bn instead.

Fair enough I could see Apple doing this. Although if batteries last as long as indicated here they would have to up the cost nearly twice as much per battery to keep profits steady.

Anecdotally, I see few people replacing their apple device (for an other one) because of battery life, and conversely stories of apple stores replacing batteries/devices because of battery life issues are regular.

All in all, I don't think they'd care. Their biggest business these days is phone & tablet, and battery life (and the failure thereof) is not the primary upgrade driver.

Battery life was one of the big things that OS X 10.9 touted as an improvement. Apple expended significant engineering effort in reducing energy use to squeeze more out of their current batteries[1]. On the mobile side of things, they developed the M7 co-processor to allow access to sensor data without having to wake up the CPU, and famously never supported flash, both in an apparent attempt to save battery life. They seem to me to be very interested in battery life and I think any technology that could increase it by significant margins would be something they would snap up.

The interesting question for Apple buying this is if battery life is a factor in their planned obsolescence. I'm not sure it is at this point.

> Panasonic would NOT pay additional money in licensing to make less money by having their batteries last longer.

> Large companies like this make sure the batteries they use aren't interchangable or standardized

Li-Ion cells are made in a variety of standard sizes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battery_sizes#Round_lithium-ion.... I happen to own a couple of individual 18650 cells, and Panasonic and a number of other companies supply these cells to battery pack manufacturers wholesale.

Battery packs for consumer electronics are another issue.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com