Hop, skip, jump and charge

Motion harvesting technology could soon be embedded into your cellphone, allowing you to charge your phone with a simple hop, skip, or jump

Commuting to work, walking, shopping or even dancing; all these activities could soon help you charge your cell phone, thanks to an emerging technology that converts regular motion into power.

Motion-harvesting technology can give mobile phone users longer times between electric charging, and will be a highly sought-after feature.

An Idaho-based startup, M2E Power, recently announced that it will start selling a cell phone charger next year that can convert six hours of everyday movement (or about two days of toting it around) into one hour of talk time.

The company hopes to one day embed its micro-generator and a battery storage system into the cell phone itself.

Motion-harvesting mobiles might not become a blockbuster hit in industrialized nations, but could fill a real need in developing nations where the power grid is woefully lacking, but cell phones are turning into a daily necessity.

In early 2010, there were a quarter of a billion cell-phone subscribers in Africa, according to the International Telecommunications Union. In India, there are about 300 million cellphone subscribers to date, and China has more than 550 million subscribers.

International Energy Agency and the World Bank statistics show that there are roughly more than 1.6 billion people without access to modern electricity grids or long power outages, most of them in Southeast Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia.

A Nokia spokesperson commented that Nokia is, "keeping an eye out" for a variety of charging options including power generated by human movement.

A spokesperson at Motorola voiced similar views, saying that motion-harvesting was a viable external power source in the short-term, and noted that it could become an integrated solution in the long-term, as power generation becomes an important design issue.

Ultimately, the determining factor in whether motion-harvesting technology makes it into mass-market cell phones will be the cost of developing such a technology, and making it financially viable for companies like Nokia and Motorola to use.