A recent report, published by IHS Automotive, has estimated that approximately 37,000,000 vehicles will feature Apple’s CarPlay platform by the year 2020.
Their report shows that prospective car owners/buyers want their smartphones to connect to their cars and a smartphone-friendly vehicle will even sway the purchase of a new vehicle. It seems car owners want smartphones, and more specifically Apps, in their cars. Over 75% surveyed said that they would pay for updates to Apps if they enabled support for use with supported car systems.
Three primary ‘connected’ platforms have been forecast in 2015; these are: MirrorLink, Google Auto and Apple CarPlay. Forecasts of the adoption of these platforms in 2015 will be slow, however as connected cars become more common in the near future we will see this figure accelerate at a rapid pace with the increased demand for ‘smart’ cars.
2015 Forecast*
- CarPlay – 861K
- Google Auto – 643K
- MirrorLink – 1.1 Million
2020 Forecast*
- CarPlay – 37 Million
- Google Auto – 31 Million
- MirrorLink – 17 Million
*Figures are rounded
Source: IHS Auto Tech Software, Apps & Services Forecast, (March, 2015).
Car owners, who were surveyed, also listed their top 5 categories that they’d like to see in their car:
- Navigation
- Weather
- Music
- News
- Social networking
Less than 15% of people who were asked wanted features such as points of interest/local, books, health and fitness, business/productivity, education or even podcasts.
Below lists what owners want from their in-car entertainment system:
- A touchscreen for entertainment, navigation and vehicle info
- Blueooth for hands-free calling
- Heads-up display
- USB port to connect MP3 player
- Telematics service such as OnStar
- High speed Internet service
- Display audio system
- Smartphone apps to use on car’s control system
- Bluetooth audio streaming
- Aux cable connection
With the rapid pace of advancing smartphone and wireless technologies, the distance between the smartphone and vehicle is getting narrower as every year passes. Platforms such as MirrorLink, Google Auto and Apple’s CarPlay will no doubt help to accelerate this to a point where, in a few years time, they will be sold as standard and become common ground to us as much as automated vehicles will be close behind it.
