Taiwanese company Sunyen yesterday said it had produced an innovative power supply technology that would enable road warriors to juice up their cellular phones, PDAs, and laptops by "shaking" them, wearing them, or hooking them up with a "shake" external recharger.

"Kinetic energy is transformed into power," said company chairman Yeh Show-yong, refusing to elaborate on how his "just-shake-me" technology works. The entrepreneur said it took him a decade to develop his gadgets.

"We cannot disclose much since we are applying for patent protection," he added.

Patent protection would "soon take effect" in 149 countries, the company said.

Unheard of in the mobile communications industry until it unveiled its so-called "Mudoo" mobile revolution, two-year-old Sunyen said it developed four self-charging devices that would render conventional battery rechargers and plug-ins obsolete.

The prototypes were introduced at a news conference yesterday.

The first item on the company's list was a handset with a built-in power-generation system. The phone could be recharged by shaking it "up and down" to start its power-generation process, it said.

Its "self-charging" mobile phone, on the one hand, is powered by a "high-capacity" battery, said Sunyen. No different from an automatic watch, the handset starts generating energy as long as its "carrier" is in motion, said company chief executive Eddie Yeh, the older Yeh's son.

"You will have unlimited power for your handset," the company official said.

Sunyen also produced a self-charging "shake" external recharger. The device could generate power by "lightly" shaking it up and down, Sunyen said, adding that "any kind of phone could be connected to the unit and recharged."

Another recharger - resembling an electric iron -produces energy in two ways: Electric recharging, where an adapter is used so that you could plug it somewhere; and mechanical recharging in which power is generated by cranking its spring mechanism up.

But here's the rub.

Sunyen refused to give specific details about its products. The company, for instance, declined to disclose the amount of "shake" time needed to produce one-hour of "talk" time. It also has yet to prove its system's efficiency and reliability.

But Sunyen CEO Eddie Yeh said "it works."

"I'm privy to the information but I cannot disclose it," smiled the younger Yeh. "This is the first of its kind in the world. In fact, what you are seeing here today is just an 'appetizer' for Sunyen. Many products - even better than what we have unveiled today - are in the pipeline. They will be released in the next couple of years."

The older Yeh said his company was not out to replace handset manufacturers. Instead of producing the devices themselves, Sunyen would license its technology to already established mobile phone makers.

"We will work with them," the company chairman said.

A Sunyen spokesman added that the technology's commercial potential was "mind-boggling."

"Handset manufacturers could easily fit this technology into their current operations," he said. "Even existing cellular phones could use this technology."

The company said it was willing to "co-design and co-develop" its technology with handset makers.

And since mobile computing was largely dependent on power supply, larger devices such as laptops, video cameras, and anything that needed power would also find Sunyen's "shake" technology beneficial, said the spokesman.

If Sunyen's power-generation technology takes off, the company is out to make a killing.

According to an industry report by Cutter Consulting, close to 60 percent of the world's workers could be classified as "mobile workers" in three years. Another industry watcher, Media Matrix, said over 10 million Americans like to receive e-mail and surf the Web using a handheld device.

Last year, 470 million handsets were produced worldwide, Reed Electronics Research said, and In-Stat/MDR estimated that the number would reach 675 million units within the next three years.

"The issue of cellular phone power supply becomes ever so critical with the advent of 3G and the mobile Internet as demand for more power escalates disproportionately," Sunyen said. "Moreover, there are the issues of costs and recycling."








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