The Power Matters Alliance along with AT&T has announced that it will integrate wireless charging within select smartphones by 2014. Those TBA handsets may be manufactured by BlackBerry, ZTE, or any of the organization’s latest members: HTC, Huawei, LG and Samsung. Notably absent is Apple, which creates its own standards.

A PMA membership doesn’t represent a commitment from manufacturers to release products that support the technology, but Duracell Powermat President Daniel Schreiber seems confident that all of the smartphone makers now on board will have releases of their own in the near future.

Question is do we need this technology. Surely it is just as easy to plug a cable into a device? What do you think?