Collaboration is a key strategy for automotive telematics ecosystem

Author: Patrick Qian, CEO, Quectel Wireless Solutions
Vehicles have evolved from mere transportation mediums to advanced mobile connectivity platforms. The evolution of automotive telematics have undergone from mere hands-free calling to screen based and portable navigation, satellite radio etc. Now we have been experiencing vehicle connectivity which is more comprehensive. It is time to enjoy automotive driving featuring seamless integration of mobility and the web.

As in most emerging sectors, the boundaries of telematics are quite fluid at the beginning and gradually gets well defined. As the market matures, companies unable to forge strong partnerships with car makers, operators, HW&SW suppliers, telematics service providers, other major players will have an increasingly difficult time staying in the space.
IBM Automotive Global Study forecasts that automotive industry will offer a greater personalized driving experience by 2025, fully autonomous vehicles or fully automated driving would probably take longer time to be reality. To develop associated ecosystem quickly to realize dream of fully autonomous vehicles would need cooperation from many technology partners from various domains and lot of collaborative efforts.
Car makers have a unique opportunity to build a new way to interact with their customer base and could fi nd telema? cs as a new tool to expand its brand equity. This might need car maker to enhance
No single player can hold dominant position in the Automotive Telematics and but it would be need contribution from various tech player who would enable it to be reality such as:

• Cellular and positioning module suppliers for wirelessly connectivity of the data between vehicle on move and data centers
• Hardware suppliers for the devices and equipments that send and receive wireless signals
• Software suppliers for infrastructure and/or specialized applications
• Telematics service providers (TSPs) for offering GNSS, entertainment service, remote diagnosis and etc. for car makers
• Wireless carriers for the band width are vital link.
• Content providers for generating the information sent to the vehicles
• Automakersfor ensuring that everything comes bundle together as one cohesive system to end user without knowing complexities of individual system brings in to make it work seamlessly.

Car makers have a unique opportunity to build a new way to interact with their customer base and could find telematics as a new tool to expand its brand equity. This might need car maker to enhance their data management skills, data analysis and keep control of enormous data being generated. It might need them to collaborate to partner with technology experts to provide various services. These experts would help them to keep abreast with technology, which is changing, at a rapid pace.
Being interconnected is essence between consumers and automakers; consumers and vehicle. Consumers, mobility and the ecosystem are causing traditional industry borders to be redrawn or even disappear. Requirement of cars are going beyond movement of people to offer sophisticated features, comforts and data for further improvement making cars increasingly intelligent. Concept of mobility is getting redefined again and again catalyzed by electronics and telecommunications enterprises.
Key driving factors for global commercial telematics markets are penetration of smart phones, ever reducing connectivity cost, availability of high speed internet bandwidth through LTE, governmental mandate in terms of safety compliance etc. By 2020, it is expected that quarter billion connected vehicles would be on road enabling new in-vehicle services and automated driving capabilities featuring comforts and convenience. According to Gartner, Inc. The Indian telematics market is expected to reach $113.7 million by 2018, growing at a CAGR of 22.8% from 2013-2018 according to a recent report from 6Wresearch, India. The only way to maintain this dramatic growth for automotive telematics market is technology agreements and collaborations.
Like any other market in India “Vehicle Telematics” is also expected to follow same trajectory to grow exponentially in coming years.