On the Multimedia Road
Test Driving the Latest in Mobile Multimedia
November/December 2003
By Catherine Applefeld Olson
photo of car and driver by Debi Fox; car provided by Stoelman Volkswagen of Tyson’s Corner, Va.; Kathleen Kennedy (model)
Automobile showroom floor contemplations, once limited to selecting exterior and interior color, have catapulted into the information age, with options ranging from advanced entertainment consoles to complex navigational systems providing automobile owners with an entirely new kind of "cruise control."
Although the jury is still out on just where many of these new gadgets intersect on the safety graph, consumers are greenlighting them with fervor.
Steve Gregor, who owns a steel company in Fontana, Calif., began adorning his cars with audiovisual gadgets 15 years ago to enhance the family's three-hour road trips to the lake.
Today, his 2003 Hummer is equipped with no less than a satellite navigation system, CD changer, speakers and subwoofers, DVD and VCR players and six 7-inch displays located on rear head rests, the passenger visor and the front console. Several have plug-ins for interactive games.
"Once you get used to having them, you can't give them up," deadpans Gregor, who says there is not one bell or whistle that he or his four children would part with. "It's like a computer. If you had to use a typewriter as opposed to a word processor nowadays, you would be pretty upset."
CEA estimates sales of mobile video and navigation devices in 2002 totaled in excess of $900 million in factory sales to dealers. The increase is a marked one over the $690 million estimated for 2001.
Decisions Decisions
Yet, while the question for many consumers today is not whether but how many new mobile gadgets to equip their car with, consumer electronics (CE) manufacturers are grappling with the question of just which features belong on the road.
"The real issue today is not what can we do in the car but what should we do in the car," says Steve Witt, vice president of brand marketing for Alpine Electronics of America. "There are many exciting technologies intended for home or desktop use that do not belong in the automobile, and there is a lot of effort from many manufacturers right now to figure out what makes sense."
The real issue today is not what can we do in the car but what should we do in the car.
The in-automobile market falls into two categories: factory-installed, or original equipment manufacturer (OEM) products, and those installed after sale—a significant area, since most of the existing 191.3 million licensed drivers in the United States, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation, are not about to buy a new car just to get a rear-seat DVD monitor, no matter how enticing.
Indeed, as of August 2002, year-to-date sales of aftermarket in-car DVD players—including overhead and floor consoles, in-dash and separate units—were just shy of 250,000 units, according to CEA.
And now that standard-definition DVD has conquered the family room, the availability of factory-installed players is spiraling out from the luxury and minivan market as well. For model year 2004, Panasonic DVD players are available in 20 General Motors cars, including the moderately priced Buick Rendezvous and Sierra, up from 14 models last year.
"Initially there was limited installation; it was perceived as a luxury-only option," says Tom Dunn, business manager for marketing, planning and development at Panasonic Automotive Systems North America. "Now we are entering the mainstream growth phase, and there are various iterations of the DVD players for different demographics."
Viewing options range from dual backseat screens that allow junior to watch Spy Kids while Uncle Ralph catches up on BBC programming to a sunroof-compatible monitor to a 7-inch flip-up LCD screen that nestles into the armrest when not in use. Some high-end systems can facilitate game-console play.
Coming down the pike are various portable plug-and-play units that can travel from car to home, as well as slimmed-down integrated component systems where mechanisms and screens are housed together. Inroads in higher visual performance and higher-resolution screen quality also are in the works.
Digital Sound Developments
Along with a landslide of visual aids, improvements in mobile sound quality are shifting into high gear as manufacturers commit to developing in-auto products for DVD-Audio, SACD (super audio compact disc), multichannel disc play and more.
The first factory-installed DVD-Audio system debuts this fall in the 2004 Acura ELS courtesy of a product jointly developed by Panasonic and veteran record producer Elliot Scheiner. Dunn predicts the trend will snowball during the coming year.
"Some of the automobile manufacturers are skeptical when we present it to them in a conversation, but they quickly lose that skepticism when they get into the vehicle and hear what the experience is all about," he says.
Fast becoming a staple of on-the-road audio are in-dash CD players that facilitate playback not only of MP3 but of additional digital audio formats, including WMA and AAC. For in-dash CD players with full functionality and this kind of playback, the ceiling seems to be about $250.
"This is becoming a standard feature for functionality even at the low end, and the trend also is driving innovation with hard drive–based products entering the market," Witt says.
As storage demands continue to swell from the expectations of the "use generation," the need for larger-capacity processors has spilled into the automotive market.
Coming down the pike are various portable plug-and-play units that can travel from car to home, as well as slimmed-down integrated component systems where mechanisms and screens are housed together.
Targeting the extremely early adopter consumer, several CE manufacturers, including Alpine, Sony and Pioneer, in 2003 launched expensive, first-generation "mega mass storage" products. Alpine's HDA-5460, for instance, packs a 16GB hard drive and a price tag of $1,000.
Out to change the current radio listening experience, Ibiquity—whose technology digitizes the existing AM and FM band—says it has worked out the kinks in its compression technology and is moving forward with product development in conjunction with licensees, including Kenwood, JVC and Panasonic.
The technology would advance AM stations to FM-like sound quality in the car—reopening the prospect of music formats playing on the AM band—and provide a channel for data streams such as weather, traffic and news over the FM band.
Futuristic applications include the ability to have content read to the driver, as well as the integration of traffic reports with navigation systems, and even a TiVo-like store-and-replay function for radio, says Dave Salemi, Ibiquity vice president of marketing.
Wireless Connectivity
Wireless connectivity to a vehicle as a means of collecting and delivering information, entertainment and safety measures is being studied by almost every facet of the industry. The technological options are myriad, ranging from satellite to analog, digital, PCS (personal communications services) or 3G (third generation) connections via either the Bluetooth or the 802.11 standard to telematics.
Factory-installed global positioning systems (GPS), notably the branded OnStar system, have made big inroads in most sectors of the business.
Additionally, Rockford Corp. recently introduced the OmniFi, an 802.11-based device to deliver entertainment content, although the general category still is at least three years from a general market launch, a launch that could splinter in different directions.
From the aftermarket perspective, entertainment content delivery is driving development in the wireless arena. From the OEM perspective, driver information and customer relationship management are the primary research and design focus.
A case in point: BMW Group this summer launched an online service inviting consumers to submit ideas for the development of new telematics and other driver assistance services. If successful, the Customer Innovation Lab may expand to encompass other mobile media areas.
Telematics, the science of combining wireless communication with an embedded GPS or other computing system, is garnering much attention for its potential to create a safer car as well as connect drivers with various industry segments.
One possible application would enable a pay-as-you-drive auto insurance model. Another would enable a digital music service to sell a download to a driver while, say, he or she is pumping gas.
However, the technology has yet to move into the commercial fast lane.
"It comes down to creating a cross-industry business model for telematics. There is not going to be a killer app, there are a whole variety of applications," says George Salmi, a telematics business development executive at IBM. "The challenge is that a lot of these folks either don't know each other, or know each other and don't like each other."
As Salmi sees its, automobile manufacturers are going ahead with the development of wireless connectivity, and telematics offers a way to differentiate their brand for a minimal incremental cost. "The telematic value equation needs to broaden as to what it can give you, the driver, beyond a cell phone or wireless PDA," he says.
IBM, which has been in the telematics trenches for years, is fine-tuning its Artificial Passenger, a voice-based system capable of providing directions, issuing warnings about vehicle, road or weather hazards, and detecting driver drowsiness and interceding. It also can deliver entertainment and information content.
Challenges in the consumer market include simplifying the design so the interface still resembles a dashboard rather than a computer desktop, Salmi says.
Satellite Radio
Following a business model similar to that of cable television, mobile satellite radio is resonating loud and clear with consumers and has crossed over to "standard feature" status in a few 2004 models.
Unlike other mobile products that migrated from the home to the car, satellite radio was born on the road and is looking to expand in the other direction with the debut of numerous plug-and-play, and home- or office-based products.
The appeal? With the number of hours the average person spends on the road nowadays, the prospect of nationwide continuous music, news and sports is a hot one.
And once they sign on, few subscribers do a U-turn, according to Todd Goodnight, senior director of product management at Sirius Satellite Radio, who says the churn rate is far lower than that of satellite TV subscribers.
"It's the lifestyle of get it now, get it when you want it," Goodnight says. "People don't want to wait for the top of the hour for the weather or news. They want to be able to go to a place for a source of information and get it immediately."
Sirius, which charges a $12.95 monthly fee for commercial-free programming, is on track to have some 300,000 subscribers by year's end. Competitor XM Satellite Radio, whose service costs $9.95 per month with some commercials, anticipates reaching 1.2 million subscribers by January and is pushing hard for the home and business markets on the merits, for instance, of a new plug-and-play component that's roughly the size of a Tic Tac box.
"We are about delivering new content options to all environments where people enjoy listening to music, news and sports," says Dan Murphy, XM senior vice president of product marketing and distribution.
Although XM and Sirius have respective exclusive deals with various auto manufacturers (the former with all GM, Honda and Toyota brands; the latter with all Ford and Chrysler brands), wooing those manufacturers that have not yet signed on, including Nissan, for one, has forced the companies to begin developing interoperable antennae, radios and tuners.
http://www.ce.org/publications/vision/2003/novdec/p14.asp
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