Mojio-Bosch Partnership: Connected Car Aftermarket Leader Eye’s the Embedded Opportunity

In June 2018, Mojio and Bosch announced a partnership to develop advanced connected car services, targeted for use by consumers as well as auto manufacturers. The partnership includes a strategic investment by Bosch, the magnitude of which was not disclosed. This latest announcement follows the news that Mojio is accelerating their efforts in hardware agnosticism by hiring former VP of Software and Innovation at GM to expand their hardware certification processes. Together, the two announcements demonstrate Mojio’s strategy to consolidate their market leading position in aftermarket and to carve out an opportunity in the all-important, long term embedded opportunity.

As the number of vehicles on the road with embedded connectivity grows, the market potential for purely aftermarket players will begin to narrow. Furthermore, the deeper level of level integration with core driving functions means that embedded connected services are those that will really “move the needle” in terms of the consumer experience. Therefore, the time is ripe for ambitious aftermarket players to make the transition to the embedded space, and established players in the embedded space would do well to pay close attention to the entry strategies of new competitors from the aftermarket space.

Mojio has rapidly established itself as the market leader in the OBD-II aftermarket connected car formfactor, seeing off fierce competition from a diverse range of players; not only other startups, but also tech giants such as Samsung. The number of active connections has surpassed 750,000, and is reported to be on the verge of the 1 million mark. In the meantime, many direct competitors, with a comparable history and identical OBD-II devices have seen their own efforts fizzle out. Here are some of the factors that have driven Mojio’s success:

• Successful Pivot from B2C to B2B: When ABI first covered Mojio, the company was following the same business model as many other startups, targeting sales of OBD devices to consumers. They then developed APIs to interpret data coming from the CAN bus, making this available to application developers and exploring efforts to attract more developers to their framework. This approach proved problematic to the entire market, with startups of only a few dozen employees struggling to gain traction with consumers and application developers. Mojio, along with the entire market, shifted to B2B relationships with larger industry partners.
• Targeting the MNOs: Mojio targeted MNOs as their key industry partners, and enjoy relationships with T-Mobile in the US, TELUS in Canada and Deutsche Telekom in Western Europe. For Mojio, network operators bring two vital strengths: robust connectivity and a proven retail operation, making devices and service plans available to consumers via the same channels as smartphones. Mojio also brings expertise and experience which can help MNOs to expand their role and authority in automotive beyond simply enabling the connectivity pipe. Competitor Vinli chose to partner with players in the vehicle maintenance space and there certainly are synergies between consumer telematics and maintaining vehicle health. However, this approach has been difficult to scale, with consumers rarely taking much interest in the health of their vehicles. Most maintenance centers depend on reactive maintenance for most of their revenues. This means that their engagement with consumers is very much on a needs-must basis, which proves a difficult environment to sell aftermarket connected car services targeted at maintaining the on-going health of the vehicle.
• Bringing Service Development in-house: This transition perhaps best demonstrates Mojio’s nimble approach to developing market conditions. The third party app developer approach created a lot of confusion for consumers, who had to navigate dozens of apps from different developers, with multiple apps offering identical functionality, but with varying degrees of support and an inconsistent UI and UX. Mojio took a major change of direction and took app development in-house, focusing on typical consumer telematics which take best advantage of CAN bus data and the inherent capabilities of the ZTE WeLink OBD device. This has allowed  Mojio, with the correct regional partnerships, to scale geographically, bringing a guaranteed minimum service level to new MNO partners.

Bringing service development in house has also made Mojio a more attractive partner to embedded connected car players looking to leverage the experience of aftermarket players to advance their own offerings.

The specific terms of Bosch’s partnership with Mojio have yet to be disclosed, only that both companies will co-develop a new suite of connected car services, which both vendors will deploy to serve consumers and automakers. On Bosch’s side, the services will be deployed as part of their Mobility Services division launched in January 2018. For aftermarket players, there are two key steps to transitioning into the embedded space on top of the same competencies that bring success in the aftermarket:

• Hardware Agnosticism: The ZTE WeLink OBD device has been a boon for the connected car aftermarket, giving robust connectivity from a difficult position (the OBD port typically being found beneath the steering wheel) and a set of embedded sensors which guarantee a minimum level of functionality irrespective of what can be drawn from the CAN bus. This is particularly important in Europe, where OEM compliance to standardized DTCs is somewhat lax. However, it is important that aftermarket players do not become beholden to a specific hardware if they wish to transition into the embedded space. Supporting HW agnosticism in the aftermarket is the first step to demonstrating an ability so support a diverse range of OEMs.
• Supporting Advanced Services: The whole approach of the aftermarket connected car has been one of enabling the typical connected car experience on the millions of unconnected cars on the road today. The embedded space has always lead service development, with the aftermarket being concerned about how to enable these services after the fact cheaply and effectively. Breaking through into the embedded space will require aftermarket players to up their game in service development, leveraging their experience, the power of crowdsourcing and partnerships with players in the embedded space to develop new services. These new services must serve as OEM differentiators or support OEMs in maintaining their vehicles once on the road.