“In a note to clients Monday, Morgan Stanley’s Katy Huberty reports that electronic parts suppliers in Asia have seen the future and it’s not 3D virtual reality headgear — at least not for now,” Philip Elmer-DeWitt reports for Fortune.
As component suppliers look for the next growth engine, they’re shifting focus to autos, engaging both existing brands and potential new entrants. Suppliers see many opportunities to leverage smartphone expertise such as in cameras, sensors, batteries, and displays. Given the changing supply chain as the industry transitions to electric from transmission powered vehicles and eventually to autonomous, we see the opportunity for technology vendors, including Google and Apple, to dominate. Component suppliers see new wearables categories like head mounted displays, as further away than the auto opportunity. — Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: It’s ironic that Google’s self-driving car (see it get pulled over in the full article) currently looks so much like this:
Just the idea of driving a Google car gives me the creeps. Imagine the possibilities? Yikes!
You mean riding in one? I’d heard Google’s autonomous cars don’t have any driver controls.
I’m sure that’s just the prototype, er, right? 😉
Come to think of it, everything from Google a prototype?
Detroit and Japan – {Computer} guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in. 😉
Yeah, it was Jobs that walked in.
We have a numbers guy in charge now.
Who would you put in charge, FFS? Griping without substance is a waste of time. Bring solutions, don’t just raise issues. That is my policy at work and it applies here, as well.
Someone please post a photo of the Oscar Meyer wienermobile. Samsung and Hyundai want to copy something tasteful.
The Google Weinermobile suits it perfectly. A car made specially for fandroids and neckbeards.
What’s a neckbeard? Is that the same as a beard, or is it a beard only one’s neck?
Sure, it is theoretically possible to have acceptably safe autonomous vehicles. For them to operate on the public road system prevalent on the planet today, this would mean that these vehicles would either a) cost as much as jet airliners or b) travel so slowly that they can’t harm anyone when a failure occurs. Otherwise, the legal risk is immeasurable. Since nobody will ever be able to determine fault, the lawyers will nail both the autom manufacturer and the vehicle owner for every accident.
As far as I can see, Apple’s decision to spend money in this area is ill-advised copying of Google. What a money pit.
It may not be sexy to Cook and Co., but there is vastly more value to be had perfecting autonymous/linked off-road vehicles (agriculture, mining, airport baggage handling, etc) where the closed environment and lower relative speed allows vehicle makers to get their systems very mature with little risk to anyone else.
Also, I would really like Apple to make a better Mac instead of advocating turning personal automobiles into complicated supercomputers that rely on very expensive always-on communications networks and huge arrays of finicky sensors in order to operate at all.
Mike, it is entirely possible that Congress will eventually pass a law to limit carmaker liability for autonomous cars. This is not without precedent. So, your doom and gloom is a bit extreme.
seeing the new Nexus phone that snaps into pieces like a rotten twig you wonder how analysts figure Google will ever build a successful car. They can’t even design a phone…
the google car looks like a bean