Twenty-six sessions and more than 30 leaders in their fields coming from all corners of Asia Pacific will form the most important telematics gathering this year. With sessions on each of the world's major car markets, the event will be truly international.
Seoul Motor Show Director General Mr. Wan Huh commented earlier: "This year is a turning point for the car industry as telematics shows the path to further service base revenues from the car manufacturers." With earlier announcements at CES from market leaders in the US like Microsoft, Yahoo! and Ford regarding in-car entertainment and localized search applications, the telematics industry is now becoming mainstream and at the heart of the hottest service models involving vehicles and portable devices.
Consumer telematics including navigation has seen massive market expansion in the last two years. For example navigation system sales in Japan increased at a compound annual rate of 21 percent from 2001 to 2004. Frost & Sullivan expects that by end-2006, navigation systems will penetrate 65 percent of new passenger cars sold in Japan, or about 4.7 million units.
While it is clear that there is a market for telematics services, it is not clear which devices people will use and which companies they will subscribe to.
Each Asian market is a different story and international players are having to rethink their strategy locally. The in-car market in Japan is extremely advanced due to the competition between the 3 main OEMs there. In Korea the PND market is stronger but as already shown by the rapid rowth in China, all this could be swiped by mobile phone based navigation and localized services.
As Velle Kolde, Product Manager for Microsoft Auto mentioned: "The overwhelming user case [for Microsoft's new in-dash Sync system in 2008 Ford cars] is mobile phones, far and away No. 1." A distant second was media player integration.
How are PND going to react to this rapid change Thomas Hallauer, editor of Telematics Update commented: "PND are not connected to any network, so their long term evolution will quickly stall. The current markets in Asia show that it is increasingly difficult to penetrate the PND market or even to survive. The novelty of the PND/ PNP will wear off and the price advantage they have been enjoying so far will quickly disappear as smartphones under contract from wireless operators start compete directly with them."
In-car integration of portable devices, licensing of the core technology to other platforms; there are many ways out but all depends on the connections between the different market players in the area and none of those solutions have shown signs of rapid success.
The simple fact is that route finding is just not sexy enough for people to get emotionally involved with their devices. They're not like MP3 players, video games systems and phones -- when new systems are released, they are desirable not just for their functionality but also because they are cool, and because people define themselves through these devices.
The ever increasing sophistication of technology promises a future where consumers can have access to personal navigation solutions that far surpass today's systems and offer a host of additional location based services. There will be a large market for these services, and the companies that start planning their future strategies now will be the ones most likely to find their niche and capture their share of tomorrow's market.
The Seoul Motor Show Telematics Forum has been created as a platform for visionary companies to plan for the future. The seminar will give attendees perspectives from all corners of the world telematics markets as well as from all the main players like Nissan, LG, SK corp., IncrementP, Navitime, Hyundai Motor, KBS, IBM and Microsoft. Hot topics in the centre of the storm will include:
* Perspectives on the in-car entertainment market's evolution
* Mobile device consolidation
* On board and portable telematics services business case
* Intelligent Safety programs update in Asia and Europe
* Location Aware services applications and models around the globe
* Portable device navigation trends
* Commercial Vehicle management telematics applications opportunities
* Content provision to the vehicle
* Navigation map incremental update
The conference will be sponsored by: ADT, Seagate and Telit and is organised by Telematics Update in partnership with KAMA and KOTBA.
