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CONNECTED CARS
ISSUE 03 2014
potential for context based opportunities – for example, location based targeted advertising, travel analytics including fuel consumption, recommendations, insurance reselling, voice-related control services and so on.”
In terms of revenue splits and shares, Accenture’s Tucker adds: “Multiple models will exist as always. An exciting prospect is the ecosystem model in which ongoing revenues are provided for the car manufacturer while connectivity, QoS and data provide core differentiation and revenues for the carrier. The carrier – or other player – creates an open, multi- platform ecosystem that includes services like digital content transcoding and integration to the home Cloud, creating content re-seller opportunities, with an SDK open developer ecosystem taking the existing model with shared revenues for the developer…it starts to look exciting. Overlaying push advertising as an ‘option’ for the consumer also means subsidised services become cheaper for the mass market.”
Once again though, we return to the issue of who owns the customer relationship and the erosion of those traditional and familiar boundaries that the different industry sectors involved have grown up with. For Karthikeyan Natarajan, global head of integrated engineering solutions at Tech Mahindra, though it’s also clear that many vehicle OEMs will need considerable help to get connected: “A number have already tried and found that it’s far too wide and complex a problem for them alone to resolve – it’s about much more than just putting a SIM card in a vehicle and supporting services, especially advanced ones. That said, connectivity alone will not be enough from the CSP’s offerings and they must include ICT and consultancy services if they’re not to be end up as a bit-pipe player in a sunset industry.”
Looking slightly further ahead, Natarajan also considers the various goals that must be aimed for. “Look at all the work underway today on autonomous vehicles and the multiple functional and technical building blocks that are going to be required to support that and the different systems – braking, steering and others – that will have to be integrated. These then all also have to tie in to wider systems such as dynamic smart routing to avoid congestion. There are also some very interesting possibilities here given the huge growth underway in car ownership and usage in developing countries. We already have large numbers of new drivers flooding onto already busy roads and there’s a potential role here for in-car systems to provide real-time feedback on their driving, acting in effect as virtual tutors to help them drive in safer and more fuel efficient ways.”
Home is where your car is
As mentioned at the start of this article, the joining up of the domestic and car environments is also happening. Benoit Joly, senior vice president of smart home services at Technicolor and responsible for Qeo, the company’s open platform for IoT and digital services explains: “With Qeo we are working with both NSPs and car manufacturers to connect the car to the rest of the home ecosystem. Say that you are nearly home, your car can alert your home thermostat you are on your way and adjust the temperature for your time of arrival. This is an interesting solution that could help consumers manage their electricity consumption and bills. Partnerships between car manufacturers and NSPs could be one solution, with a system of shared revenues.”
As far as who takes responsibility for problems when things go wrong, he adds: “If the service provider provides/sells the device, then it is the service providers’ responsibility. If the devices used are bought from several vendors by the end user, it is the responsibility of the device manufacturer. Either way users tend to call their service provider when things go wrong. A solution we have developed is what we call the Qeo ‘doctor’ application, which helps the service provider to quickly identify where and what is the problem in the network, and solve it rapidly.”
Karthikeyan Natarajan, global head of integrated engineering solutions at Tech Mahindra
So, with all these networking developments – and we’ve already had talking cars for a few years now as well – it looks like it’s time to update the words of that old Roy Rogers cowboy song to “My four wheeled friend, my four wheeled friend…” LTE
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