Day 3 @SXSW

13:27 mareku 0 Comments

Marijn checking the schedule

Lots of people in the ACC

We are really busy from early morning till late at night trying to follow the interesting events that are going on at this conference. There are lots of mobile, social sessions that are of interest and also some specific car oriented ones. Today we had a session with Michelle Avary of Toyota Motor Sales - who shared their experiences with in car apps and what could be the future of these apps.
The apps are focused on:
safety & securtity
navigation
diagnostics
convenience (fuel prices / traffic etc)
entertainment

And for each segment there are specific requirements to meet and there is a policy of the car manufacturer. (e.g. level of involvement, type of app - in head set or external etc.) Leading developments are Ford Sync, Toyota Entune, Mercedes Mbrace, Hyundai Bluelink.
But it will take some time before we will have 1 standard. Even withing 1 car brand there are several different technologies and also between countries it differs. the car industry is also used to a very long development process (7 years) and model tunrover (7 years) and ownership (also 7 years)= total of 21 years! (compare with an iPhone which has a total turnover of one year).
So do not expect to see things moving very soon...