by Chun Go-eun
In spite of fast development of telematics, the telematics market has been growing slowly because of its low demand due to the fear. People fear the idea of pushing a button to make a direct call to Starbucks or the Fire Department, because it is something that shakes up their accustomed life and requires people to rely on machines.
The first thing that the most people think of by hearing the word telematics would be navigation. But when it comes to buy it as an option on a car, some decide to live without. Not only have these factors affected the growth of the market, but also the disagreement between car manufacturers and operators.
But here we have to note that the mobile communication industry grew to its peak along with the automobile industry especially from 2000. The telematics industry could serve as a matchmaker between those two industries to create a whole new industry market. It is just a matter of time before the customers give more value to the service, and companies come together.
On April 9 -10 the Seoul Motor Show Telematics Forum was held to provide a place to discuss the telematics industry today and in the future. Managers or directors from AutoNavi, ETRI, IBM Taiwan, LG Electronics, KTF, KBS, SK Corp, Telematics Research Group, and 17 other foreign companies including Microsoft ABU and Nissan Motors gave speeches and presentations based on their study and analysis. Through each presentation, attendees were able to tell where they are in comparison to other companies or countries, and were able to discuss and share their thoughts and solutions.
In Sweden, however, local meetings and conferences are occasionally held by an organization called Telematics Valley. Executive Director of Telematics Valley Jan Unander was one of the speakers who gave the presentation. The company is a non profit organization that is funded by either the membership or the region. "I am a facilitator," Jan said. "The key to my job is to get the members active and create ideas, thoughts, and forums to make them talk together. The good thing about our organization is that it contains all the players. You need to create services, so you got everything from one man band consultant specialized speech recognition to software and hardware developers to content providers to telecom operators. I am trying to make them work together and I'm aiming to have full chain in our organization."
Jan went on to say: "This was a brilliant idea. Telematics is such a broad industry. It could be anything from navigation to Bluetooth to GPS and so on. Different specialized companies building relations and seeking for inspiration through frequent communications could bring a whole new solution to low demand telematics burn." He went on to say that the big question is how to teach the players on the market how to collaborate with each other, the buyers to buy the right kind of systems buy the functionality, not to split it up.
When it became a new law in Europe for car manufacturers to stop forcing the dealers or workshops to buy genuine spare parts, allowing purchasing of other spare parts, the price of spare parts and the cars went down, Mr. Unander noted. "Their most countable income was from signing a long term contract with customers so "they could own the customers," he explained. That meant that now they took full responsibility. "In order to manage the contract, they need to get the information on cars, and then here the telematics is needed. You collect information online, send it to someone online, have them to come and pick up the car," Jan concluded, "That is the development we see." The success of telematics market, on the other hand, relies on customers.
"Car manufacturers today force customers to buy services by the car manufacturers or dealers -- then you have to put the telephone integrated into the vehicle. The business paid for that has not been improved because the frequency of use or received value was too low combining these two together. Therefore, it doesn't come that valuable for us." "In business' case," Jan continued, "Operators, especially handset manufacturers today started to compete with operators regard to services." The car manufacturers learned the hard way that the business is not allowed by them, it is for customers to decide. "We see the future that car manufacturers will accept the business relations with operators." Jan noted.
