Audiovox Sees Aftermarket Opportunities, Challenges in Connected World
The automotive aftermarket is in a “transition period” where traditional businesses are changing very quickly, said Audiovox President Tom Malone on the “Keeping Pace with CE” panel, part of the Connected Car Conference during CE Week in New York. Core categories are evolving as car makers are giving consumers more of the connected infotainment features they're looking for in their vehicles, Malone said.
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Gone are the days of the built-in drop-down disc player for the back seat, Malone said. “Clearly, a 15-year-old isn’t carrying around a DVD player,” he said. Audiovox is focusing a lot of its efforts on rear-seat entertainment, addressing the challenge of how to deliver content to the vehicle. Content consumption today is “personal,” making touch-screens and embedded screens “not great for the rear seat environment.” Audiovox pioneered rear-seat entertainment for the aftermarket, Malone said, and now it has shifted gears with the strategy: “Let the consumer bring in whatever device they want,” he said. “It’s all about content delivery.” The 18-month to 24-month replacement cycle of a smartphone has to work within the life cycle of the vehicle, which today can be as long as 14 years, Malone noted. Consumers will want to access content wirelessly within the vehicle in a variety of ways -- through Wi-Fi, cellular, USB, SD or from stored content within the vehicle, he said. “We're not going to determine what device they're going to bring in. We want to provide the solution so that when they get into the car, they can connect to that content.” The in-vehicle space is no longer about the DVD with a screen, but the ability to “use your device seamlessly and easily when you get into the car.”
Audiovox is talking with its OEMs about applications to build off that connectivity. The company’s ability to get product into the aftermarket channel gives it a chance to “see what resonates with the consumer,” he said. “There are so many different ways now to connect to the vehicle. The challenge is going to be ones that allow you to do seamlessly for whatever device you bring into the car.” Audiovox won’t focus on keeping up with the devices but instead on the way they connect to the car, he said.
The car electronics aftermarket is “still healthy,” Malone said, although it’s not installing the same number of radios or rear-seat entertainment systems as before. Dealers are looking for the next trend, he said, citing GM’s new remote start app, which he called “phenomenal.” Audiovox makes such a feature for its OEMs, he said. A docking solution for rear-seat entertainment is one opportunity among many, he said. Technology is now looked at as providing the “personality” of the vehicle, he said. Car companies’ urgency to implement and integrate infotainment systems “as fast as possible” is going to “continue to put challenges on the aftermarket part of the market.”
Derek Kuhn, vice president-sales and marketing for automotive software company QNX Software Systems, said the cross-pollination between automotive and the consumer electronics mobility space is “at a pace we've never seen before.” QNX has worked with OEMs over the years to bring CE products to the vehicle space, transferring the user interface of the iPod, for example, to the screen. And while those transitional steps provided a modest stream of business, Apple’s announcement several weeks ago that the upcoming iOS 7 would integrate iPhone 5 with vehicle multimedia systems “has potentially upped the ante even further because they have demonstrated more than media and telephony access in their system,” Kuhn said. “Some might suggest that it is in a competitive nature to the built-in experience,” he said.
Kuhn predicted more competition from outside the traditional infotainment space as companies look to provide what the consumer wants and to provide choice where little exists today. He cautioned that those efforts have to be done in a way “that the OEM community is comfortable with” as well. The automotive industry, he noted, is the most regulated industry in the country, which causes car makers to be extremely deliberate in the technology choices they make.
GM monitors and takes cues from activities going on on the CE side, and its partnership with AT&T for bringing LTE connectivity to vehicles “opened our eyes to how to move faster,” said Tim Nixon, chief technology officer of GM’s Global Connected Consumer group. While smartphones and tablets in the vehicle can’t be distracting and the ultimate concern is for consumers to keep eyes on the road and hands on the wheel, “that doesn’t mean we can’t take design cues from our tech partners,” he said. One area it’s working on is how to leverage the data available through connectivity while respecting privacy. “No one knows more” than GM engineers about the information that could be passed on to drivers about tire pressure levels or charging levels --even when they're not in the vehicle, he said.