Perspectives
Traditional telematics services such as fleet management and automatic emergency calling first offered by Onstar more than a decade ago were among the first applications of GPS technology. Recent evolutions promise to bring a wider range of connected infotainment services into the car environment. However, the telematics industry is characterized by a high degree of fragmentation, long design cycles, lack of personalization and upgrade capabilities, and high costs, making it increasingly difficult to compete with portable consumer devices such as PNDs, MP3 players and handsets on which software based telematics services are starting to appear.
The future of the telematics industry hinges on the ability of car manufacturers and telematics service providers to adopt open source software approaches, telematics standards, new business models and a far reaching willingness to cooperate across the whole value chain. This transformation process is at the heart of the Telematics Research Service coverage, offering in-depth understanding of the underlying dynamics.
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