As cars become increasingly software-driven, non-automotive companies gradually start viable claims on the driver’s seat. Of course, automakers fear should they lose their customers to software giants cars might become somehow commodity devices defined (and ruled) by software. If the automotive industry doesn’t toughen up their vehicle platforms to serve social media, enable locations based services and adopt the Internet of Things, the big software and Internet players will conquer and eventually dominate the automotive ecosystem.
Location-aware mobile services allow vehicles and drivers to share detected events; incidents and location over social media channels in real-time. Each individual who shares location-based data contributes to a richer, more accurate and real-time digital map of the world. Vehicles must no longer be part of an isolated digital ecosystem (embedded era) and need to be fully integrated into the everyday-lives of consumers (mobility era). Cars are extremely powerful and helpful sensors when it comes to real-time capturing our mobility world.
The potential data the automotive industry neglects and ignores today is much more valuable than they thought. The value of fully connected vehicles will be defined by the amount of collected data and the number of software apps utilizing an open and standardized automotive platform. Over time the (still new) relationship between automakers and software providers will show interesting symptoms of an ongoing transformation process.