IKEA Releases New Furniture Collection, Promises Better Living Through Wireless Power It tempting to dismiss IKEA new embrace of furniture that will charge your phone as a gimmick. After all, what are the chancesreallythat laying your device down on a pad or table top to charge will significantly improve the quality of your life? In fact, thousands of hours of observational research argues that it will. We know that people are attached at the hip to their smartphones, said Janice Simonsen, IKEA U.S. design spokesperson. They are constantly referencing it, and one of the biggest problems is the constant need for charging. The research, part of IKEA ongoing effort to design products that improve the average, day-to-day experience, led to a new furniture line that began rolling out to stores in Europe on Wednesday. The hallmark of the Wireless Charging Collection is built-in wireless charging. The line includes a bed-loft combo, a desk, two bedside tables and floor, table and work lamps with embedded transmitters. The collection will arrive in U.S. stores later this spring. Simonsen said the tables and lamps were chosen because they are adaptable, transitional and streamlined. In colors of white or birch, they are meant to blend into the home. They look like they belong there, she said. IKEA transmitters will work with the Samsung Galaxy S6, and are compatible with any phone that includes Qi wireless charging technology. (You may need to activate it in the settings.) iPhones can be used with a special case that IKEA sells. And if IKEA furniture doesnt appeal to you, but the idea of embedded wireless charging does, IKEA sells both an embeddable charger ($29.99) and a special circular saw ($4.99) you need to install it yourself. (The saw attaches to a standard power drill.) Photos featuring the new products emphasize simplicity and ease. In one, a woman lounges comfortably on a couch while her smartphone lies cradled on a small shelf attached to a reading lamp in easy reach. The message: Both human and device are being recharged. Indeed, the rollout could mark the first major shift in the function of furniture since prehistoric man started forming beds, chairs and cubbyholes out of wood, stone and animal skins. For IKEA, it a chance to reshape domestic life around the globe a second time. Founded in 1943, IKEA grew from a simple furniture dealer in a pinched little town in southern Sweden to an international behemoth with 315 stores in 27 countries by capitalizing on the Scandinavian design movement. The idea that beautiful, functional objects could be made available to everyone emerged in the 1950s. But it wasnt until the mid-1970s that the concept of IKEA, as it exists today, crystallized in the mind of Ingvar Kamprad, the company founder. On December 20, 1976, Kamprad published his manifesto: The Testament of a Furniture Dealer. In it, he elaborated on the company mission to provide a wide range of well-designed, functional home furnishing products at prices so low that as many people as possible will be able to afford them. Kamprad was targeting people with thin wallets. But as IKEA expanded overseas, Kamprad discovered that offering low prices wasnt enough, he had to win over customers with truly beautiful designs. After U.S. consumers rejected IKEA furniture as cheap and ugly, the company launched a significant research effort in the mid-1990s to figure out what Americans wanted. In 1995, the company debuted its new designs at the Furniture Fair in Milan. As journalist John Leland would note in the New York Times Magazine seven years later, IKEA aesthetic coincided with a shift in American cultural values. After years of viewing furniture as a prized possession, Americans were ready to have a more transitory relationship with their stuff. The disposable sofa had conquered America and Europe and was on its way to Asia. IKEA had redefined how people viewed household furnishings. Today, IKEA sells more than $30 billion worth of furniture each year and is one of the world largest single consumers of wood, using a total of 20.27 million cubic yards in 2014. The invisible designer of domestic life, it not only reflects but also molds, in its ubiquity, our routines and our attitudes, Lauren Collins wrote in the New Yorker in October 2011. When IKEA stopped selling incandescent bulbs, last year, six hundred and twenty-six million people became environmentalists. IKEA may be wrong about the benefits of wireless charging, and its new furniture line could be a flop. But if IKEA is right, the retailer is uniquely positioned to bring wireless charging to as many people as possible at the lowest possible price. The global entanglement with charging cords may be about to end.