Industry Standards for IVI: MirrorLink Versus GENIVI

Consumers want to stay connected in their cars and OEMs increasingly see infotainment as a key differentiator for their vehicles. However, as the OEMs strive to meet their customers’ technological demands they must decide whether to deliver services through an embedded onboard system or via the customer’s mobile phone.

At stake is whether the in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) system remains a proprietary system controlled by a small number of OEMs, becomes an open eco-system nurtured by an international developer community that contributes customizations and upgrades, or whether all connectivity, processing, and service delivery resides in the phone and is controlled by the mobile phone industry.

With embedded electronics now representing almost one-third of a vehicle’s cost and in-vehicle infotainment systems accounting for a substantial share of that cost, the role of software standards has never been more important in the automotive world.

This article compares the prospects of smartphone integrated systems such as the MirrorLink standard developed by the Connected Car Consortium (CCC) with open source embedded systems such as GENIVI and provides adoption forecasts for both standards.