Ford Tops OEM Automotive Infotainment Competitive Assessment, BMW and Toyota Ending Second and Third

Research News

London, United Kingdom - 31 Oct 2012

Ford ranks first in ABI Research’s OEM connected automotive infotainment Competitive Assessment, performing strongly in re g ional coverage offering SYNC in Europe, North America, and Asia and in market share. In second place was BMW, excelling in regional coverage, quality, and feature set. Challenger Toyota took third place scoring high on quality and open platforms.

“Ford ranks first across implementation and second across innovation criteria. It scores high on pricing due to its free hybrid solution, open platforms & cloud, using the Windows Embedded platform, and engaging ecosystem partners to build its automotive application store. It scores fairly high on quality & reliability, despite a number of glitches with MyFord Touch. Going forward, it might have to review its strategy as fully embedded systems become more affordable,” says VP and practice director Dominique Bonte.

BMW has led the way in bringing connected infotainment to the car, earning first rank across innovation criteria, scoring high on social networking integration based on pre-programmed or user-created messages based on location, destination, estimated time of arrival, and weather. It also offers in-car Wi-Fi and state-of-the-art HMI based on its BMW iDrive controller. However, it only ranks third across implementation, its premium solution failing to reach high market penetration and share despite its efforts in adopting an open source infotainment platform (GENIVI) and offering more affordable solutions via the smartphone-based Live services or semi-integrated connected Go Live PNDs from TomTom.

Toyota has been ramping up its connected infotainment efforts, launching Toyota Entune in the US and Toyota Life in Europe as well as introducing a MirrorLink-based system in Europe, next to its longstanding G-Book offer in Japan and more recently China.

This Competitive Assessment provides a rating of 9 leading OEM automotive infotainment vendors which were analyzed against 13 “innovation” and “implementation” criteria in addition to a market share analysis. These findings are part of ABI Research’s Automotive Infotainment Research Service.

ABI Research provides in-depth analysis and quantitative forecasting of trends in global connectivity and other emerging technologies. From offices in North America, Europe and Asia, ABI Research’s worldwide team of experts advises thousands of decision makers through 70+ research and advisory services. Est. 1990. For more information visit www.abiresearch.com , or call +1.516.624.2500.