“Apple’s newly announced CarPlay, which is the rebranded version of iOS in the Car, a system for converting your vehicle’s in-car entertainment system into an iOS-powered dashboard fed content and brains by your phone, is a play that could massively expand the Apple mobile ecosystem – by turning cars into app-enabled iPhone accessories,” Darrell Etherington reports for TechCrunch.
“The CarPlay system was revealed today during the Geneva Motor Show, where partners Ferrari, Mercedes-Benz and Volvo all announced that they’d begin shipping CarPlay-enabled vehicles to drivers this week. In 2014, that group will expand to include Honda, Hyundai and Jaguar, and beyond that it’ll ship on cars from BMW, Chevrolet, Ford, Kia, Land Rover, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Open, Peugeot-Citroën, Subaru, Suzuki and Toyota,” Etherington reports. “There are still some manufacturers missing from that list, including Fiat’s stateside brand of Chrysler and any car company from VW Group, but really that means Apple will soon have direct access to a platform expansion that could put its products and software front and center in potentially over 15 million new places annually – that’s how many new cars were sold globally last year.”
“The integration works through the iPhone’s lightning port, meaning that it’s only compatible with iPhone 5, iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c, and of course not ever new car sold will have CarPlay integration built-in (it’ll likely be an add-on option for many of these manufacturers, since it represents a chance to offer additional value and that’s generally the way upgrade packages work),” Etherington reports. “Still, it’s a big potential market, and while it does represent existing people who already own iPhone devices, it still has the power to impact iPhone sales via the network effect…”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Fiat and VW Group would do well to WTFU.
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