ABI Research… The Drive For Entertainment (Report)

[SatNews] ABI Research’s new report studies the main technologies, services, and market participants in the automotive infotainment movement, and includes shipment and revenues forecasts.

Connected infotainment will be dominated by connected navigation, with global shipments reaching 27 million by 2016. Widespread interest in multimedia streaming, social media integration, and in-car Wi-Fi is still unproven. Automotive connected infotainment systems are being driven by a number of factors.

“The emergence of smartphones and applications and their integration into the vehicle environment, decreasing hardware and connectivity costs, consumer interest and increasing awareness, fast development of cloud-based and web-based services, and consumers’ drive to extend their ‘connected lifestyle’ into the car environment are all key contributors to the push for connected infotainment,” says Dominique Bonte, group director, telematics and navigation. “These infotainment systems are being implemented by many car OEMs, with the two most innovative being social networking integration and radio streaming.” Social networking integration would allow users to access applications like Facebook, Twitter, and Yelp, among others. Facebook users, for example, would be able to listen to status updates and enter new updates via speech recognition through their vehicle. Social media integration however, is controversial as it has the highest risk of creating driver distraction and conservative car OEMs are concerned about launching such functionality.

Overall, however, Bonte believes that connected infotainment in vehicles is inevitable. “There is no way of stopping connected infotainment from finally conquering the car.  One way or another, users will access entertainment and information while driving.  While connected PNDs, smartphones, and tablets are already being adopted, the main challenge for the automotive industry is either allowing safe integration of portable infotainment devices, in various flavors of more or less integration, or preferably, provide embedded infotainment solutions maintaining control over quality, safety, branding, and business models,” he says.

ABI Research’s new report, “Connected Automotive Infotainment Systems,” studies the main technologies, services, and market participants in the automotive infotainment movement, and includes shipment and revenues forecasts. It is a component of the Connected Car Research Service, which also includes other Research Reports, Market Data, ABI Insights, Vendor Matrices, and Research Surveys.