Telecom Lead Asia: OEM connected car system shipments are
likely to grow to 39.5 million in 2016 from 8.22 million in 2012.
The United States and Western Europe will remain the leading
regions.
Car OEMs such as GM, Toyota, Nissan, Hyundai, and
Mercedes Benz are looking to China as the next major expansion area for
launching connected car solutions to maintain or enhance their competitive
position in this fledgling market.
In the US, connected car solutions have already become a
must have – the dynamics of which were set in motion by Ford – with almost
every single OEM now having launched solutions including Chrysler, coming to
the party rather late with their enhanced Uconnect offer.
Clearly the automotive industry has moved on from
looking at telematics and connected car solutions as a nice premium add-on
option to seeing bringing connectivity to the car as an essential tool to
create more value to the end user, driving loyalty via advanced CRM-based
customer experience tools and strengthening their overall branding and
positioning in an increasingly competitive market,” said Dominique Bonte, vice
president and group director, telematics and M2M, ABI Research.
While connected automotive infotainment continues to
steal the limelight, traditional safety and security functionality remains
important from an OEM perspective, due to either historical reasons (US – GM
OnStar) or driven by mandates such as eCall in Europe, ERA-GLONASS emergency
calling in Russia, and the Contran stolen vehicle legislation in Brazil. Usage
based insurance (UBI) – aka insurance telematics – is making a strong comeback.
