The Future of Luxury Infotainment Systems Should Not be IOS

"ssidd47" (ssidd47) 03/01/2014 at 23:20 • Filed to: None

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Just recently, Apple announced that Volvo, Mercedes-Benz, and Ferrari will debut models that use the new !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! systems at the Geneva Auto Show next week. Mercedes and Ferrari don't just make incredible vehicles, but are often on the forefront of introducing new technologies. The fact that both manufacturers are willing to partner with Apple, provides a huge boost for their push into the automotive sphere.

I understand why Mercedes and Volvo would want this system. The appeal to younger consumers involved with the Apple ecosystem is huge. This is especially important to Mercedes, as they've been angling for a younger generation of buyers. And it would certainly help Volvo as well. Ferrari still remains up in the air. Perhaps they're interested in partnering with a firm that values design as much as they do.

In the long run, however, this is not an optimal decision for any of these manufacturers. First, it ties them to Apple. In recent years, Apple has grown into quite a behemoth. As it's done so, innovation has dipped. Apple has struggled to release new products, features, and higher spec'd revisions of previous releases (full disclosure: I own and love an iPad Air, Samsung SIII, and Microsoft Surface). And !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! .

Second, it beholds them to Apple's ecosystem. It's definitely a fact, that Apple is a huge player in the mobile computing space. But their !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in developed countries, and they're lagging behind Android in emerging markets like China. Mercedes, Ferrari, and Volvo are all seeking to woo Chinese customers, but using an Apple ecosystem may not be the sharpest option.

So what should Mercedes and Ferrari do? They should build their own ecosystem ambivalent infotainment system, as they've been doing since inception. They won't be without their flaws, but it's better than partnering with a firm that may not be there in the long run. In the past, Apple has shown willingness to drop products once they're ready to release a new revision or replacement product. They !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! after only 4.5 years of being on the market, and with little to no alerts to their customers.

Consumer technology is a fast moving industry. Products, and even ecosystems, are ephemeral. While Apple may be a giant this year, they may be nothing more than a dwarf in five. A car isn't a product such as a phone or computer. Customers don't just throw away their vehicle after a contract is through.

I'm going to throw Mercedes and Ferrari a free idea here (more disclosure: I'm not an engineer, so please be forgiving if the idea isn't the most technologically thought out). Build an app that's ecosystem agnostic. It'll mirror the features available on the customer's phone. For instance, the music will connect to Google Play on Android or iTunes on Apple. Same with maps and messaging. Mercedes already does this to an extent with their MBRACE system. The same app can provide information about the vehicle straight to the customer's phone. AMG might use it to send lap times after a track day.

This is just one small idea. There's so much more both of these marques can do with their infotainment systems. It's sad that they're just going to stick with what's already there instead of innovating.

JustWaitingForAMate > ssidd47 03/01/2014 at 23:29

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Or use a 3rd party system that is designed to be open and accessible by all smart hardware, be it phones, tablets, etc.

Develop a new standard for car infotainment systems and create APIs for each of the smart ware OSes.

This allows iOS/Windows/Android to patch into a system that has been designed from the ground up to allow cross communication no matter the device, keeps car manufacturers from tying themselves to one brand in particular, and allows the development and enhancement of the system to be independent of the whims of the smart ware OS providers.

BoxerFanatic, troublesome iconoclast. > ssidd47 03/01/2014 at 23:45

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Car companies aren't software companies.

Frankly, tech hardware evolves faster than a car's useful life, so it is barely feasible for built-in infotainment as it is.

Software moves even faster, and frankly, car companies are barely good enough at building CARS that last without safety recalls, and reliability problems... they don't have the chops for software and tech hardware, nor should they try to compete.

We saw how BMW's iDrive worked... and how miserable people were with incessant menu navigating, and labyrinthian software interface layout.

Between Microsoft, Google, and Apple....

Apple is the choice, because Microsoft can't design an interface that is both reliable and intuitive.

Google is slightly better at interface design, but they show that they are more in it for themselves and their own data mining, than their shared interest with any business partner, and the user comes in dead last, as the product being marketed, not the customer.

Apple sells their hardware to customers, to pay for it's software, and they are the best at interface design in the industry. They prove time and time again that they are the benchmark of intuitive software design, and they aren't solely mining their users for data to sell to anyone else who will buy the aggregate.

Let the people who know customers, and tech, and sell the most portable tech to customers, do what they do best.

Car manufacturers, especially niche high-end ones, can't afford to be glitchy, and hung up on tech rather than building the cars. Bad customer service, and bad personal experience can make or break a premium product. Nobody wants to spend a LOT of money on something that isn't polished, and isn't well developed.

Apple makes the MOST sense, and they have become the leader, and the most valuable company in the world, for a reason.

They may not have half-baked feature sets, or 20 different concurrent versions of software, for thousands of different hardware sets, like Google and Microsoft do. If the third world is adopting Android and Microsoft software at a faster rate, it is simply because it is GIVEN away on any and all cheap hardware that is offered with no quality control, and Apple actually has standards, which means their product has R&D bills to pay, but it WORKS, and works well for all sorts of users, not just geeks who like messing around figuring unintuitive things out.

Especially not when they should be paying attention to the road.

f86sabre > ssidd47 03/02/2014 at 00:09

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Just make the car with a USB port or Bluetooth and let the devise in your pocket do the work. Whichever system they choose is going to struggle 10, 20 or 30 years down the road. You turn on the radio in a 1969 Ferarri and you can still listen. You try and fire up a old car OS in 30 years and who knows.

duurtlang > BoxerFanatic, troublesome iconoclast. 03/02/2014 at 05:12

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I'm sorry to break it to you, but you sound like a fanboy. I'm not arguing Apple can't make a great car entertainment environment, because I'm sure they can. But the huge advantages you transcribe to Apple over their competition are (hardly) there.

Furthermore, I hope you do realize that continents like Europe aren't part of the third world. I honestly see more high end Android phones than Apple phones here. Add the mid and low end markets, and the picture seems clear. Market share from the top of my head; Android 75%, Apple 20% and dwindling. I actually hear more of my friends talking about upgrading their current phone to a Windows device than an iOS device. And it isn't the young crowd that still buys Apple products here, quite the opposite really. An iPhone is a bit of a default phone for the look-at-how-hip-I-am 50+ crowd here, the crowd younger people don't want to associate with.

Eric the RC guy > BoxerFanatic, troublesome iconoclast. 03/02/2014 at 08:10

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Wow, Stevey boys nuts must taste really good for you to still be gripping them with your teeth this long after he died.

Okay guys, we're going to take a rectangle, but let's round the corners a bit. Revolution. So we're going to have this main screen and it will have little pictures on it (shall we call them icons? I just invented that word) and clicking them allows you to open the application. We'll call them apps instead though. Design revolution yo.

Apple markets their products exclusively to stupid people, and stupid people eat that shit like candy.

Customer: "Power steering doesn't work, and there's a strong vibration in the front end over 30mph"
Apple: "You're driving it wrong. If you only turn while moving and keep it under 30 it works fine."
BoxerFanatic: "See, it just works so perfectly, and the whole thing is executed so well. Never mind having no innovation to speak of, and broken products, it is just perfect. Can I kiss you 'down there' Mr. Cook?"

BoxerFanatic, troublesome iconoclast. > Eric the RC guy 03/02/2014 at 14:56

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There is no call to be crass.

And when you have supported 5000+ Microsoft-platform and Apple laptops for more than 10 years... maybe you can give me advice on technology.

I am not a fanboy, I am a professional, and I know USERS. Even crass, foul ones like you. I deal with users, and I know what is reliable.

I know how well reliability for car brands that throw new, untried, failure prone, and half-baked features at their cars tend to affect user satisfaction, too.

How do people like their new touch-screen Fords, with Microsoft's SYNC, with system failures, and un-reliability?

How do people like tech-laden cars that won't last past their warranty date, and cost more than the resale value to constantly repair?

Nobody makes a perfect product. Not Apple, not *ANYBODY*, but there are far, far worse ones out there than Apple. The king of the hill is an easy target to aim at for people who are disagreeable, rather than just simply disagreeing.

BoxerFanatic, troublesome iconoclast. > duurtlang 03/02/2014 at 15:13

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I am not a fanboy, I am an IT professional. I deal with tech every day, and I fix what other people break, and I explain what others don't grasp, So I KNOW what works and what doesn't.

Microsoft is a nightmare, and Google is opportunistic and uses it's user base as chattel to be mined and marketed to others.

Apple is not perfect. They don't do everything right, but they DO stick to a basic economic model that they sell their goods as a product to their consumers. They don't sell their consumers as a product to other corporations or the government.

Say what you want about Apple not having every little new trick and gimmick. They don't. But they do have the best interface on the market, Google and Microsoft follow, and Samsung and others copy their hardware designs.

Everybody watches what Apple does, and then they turn around and put their own spin on that base line.

Apple has 2 phone models this year, and had only ONE model before.

How many models of phones from how many different brands of hardware come with Android? How many with Microsoft? How many different versions of android are out in the wild, that some phones support, and others don't?

By the stats of hardware variants, just in smart-phones, Apple should have less than 5% marketshare, yet they don't, they have far more.

Not only that, but Apple's iOS also serves tablets, and frankly, iPad beats the pants off of most others, in terms of satisfied user experience.

iPhone revolutionized the cellular telephone, and iPad invented the tablet market and pretty much single-handedly destroyed the netbook market, that windows was focusing on at the time.

And a lot of the points you make are from the top of your head, or your anecdotal experience, and your preference for other products...

So if you think I sound like a fanboy, perhaps it is because it is your opinion of everyone and anyone who differs from your opinion by preferring an Apple product.

Heaven forbid someone actually take the counterpoint to the original article, and actually prefer an Apple product over Google, Microsoft, or some half-baked, barely-supported, quickly obselete system that a car company would try to cook up...

Wilson > ssidd47 03/04/2014 at 20:37

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I couldn't agree less. Car companies have tried and failed for a couple decades to design their own systems. They have all been crap. Nothing I can buy with a car (sometime for thousands extra) provides as simple and straightforward an experience as using my iPhone. I'd be just as happy to see a vendor go with an Android system, but I'd want that to be made by one of the top tier Android manufacturers.

Microsoft has tried and failed at this, so they're out of the game. Well, they didn't exactly try with Ford's Sync, but they threw their hat in and represented a shoddy implementation built on hoary old Windows CE as their best effort, shooting themselves in the foot should they want to actually make a real go of it sometime.

In addition to car companies doing a bad job, they also don't understand software support and upgradeability. Sure, they'll sell you an upgraded map pack for a few hundred $ every year to work on your overpriced built-in nav system, but by the time that's installed, it's completely out of date, unlike Google/Waze/Apple maps which are constantly improved for free. Major bugs languish forever in car systems, but mobile providers generally work them out within a few months.

A car integration system isn't going to rule a car in or out, but when I'm deciding between multiple cars, it could very easily be the tipping point. If there is a good system (by Apple or Samsung, say) then I'd be willing to pay more for it. If it's another system from a car company, then I better be able to get the car without it or will stop a sale.

Wilson > duurtlang 03/04/2014 at 20:45

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Market share isn't a useful metric. Look at profit share. More importantly, look at market share crossed with income demographics.

Chevy should probably keep Android compatibility in mind when partnering for the latest Aveo, but you build for your aactual market, so BMW needs to skew heavily towards iOS support.

As much as I think it's a decent OS, there is no business reason for any car company to worry about Windows Phone compatibility, so let's not mention that again. It has no market significance.

I'm all for OS-agnostic integrations systems, but I'm much more interested in well implemented systems. Apple has a real system that looks straightforward and far better than any other car system I've seen to date. Hopefully it will motivate the big Android makers to ante up and start a bit of a competition in that space.

duurtlang > Wilson 03/04/2014 at 23:23

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Profit share is an important metric when you're an app designer. It's not an impotant metric when you want to sell cars. You're a car manufacturer and you want to design a system that A. works and B. is familiar to potential buyers. Then market share is more important.
I will fully admit I have a European perspective in this. After the last comment I looked up continent specific market share again. I'm on a phone and have little time so I won't provide you with a link, but it's easily enough to find. Anyway, Android 68%, iOS 18%, Windows 10%. Android and Windows growing, iOS dropping. And although I don't have the numbers to back it up I'm sure something similar is true for most if not all other continents that aren't NA. From that metric alone iOS doesn't make much sense.
There's another factor though. I've read the system requires a Lightning connector. I'm sure it's a connector that works well, but I (31, masters degree, within the target demographic to buy a car I'd say) do know that my current phone doesn't have one, my future phone won't have one and the vast majority of my friends' current phones and future phones won't have one either. It just makes little sense for a manufacturer to go in bed with a tech company with both a smallish market share and a history of incompatibility with everything that isn't both recent and made by themselves. You want inclusiveness that will still be inclusive a decade from now. Apple is a very odd partner to pick from that point of view.

ssidd47 > JustWaitingForAMate 03/05/2014 at 10:17

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I like this. This is actually kind of what I was aiming at with my really badly phrased idea in the post.