Q. Why is Telematics relevant today A: Telematics is more relevant than ever; the convergence of a series of technical and behavioral factors have made the technology underlining it affordable and fast evolving, while convergence with popular portable devices have made it more relevant, understood and used by the consumer. Telematics as its main application, navigation, is becoming ubiquitous and with it the maps and points of interest are now the property of the users, not the service providers.
Telematics services have made huge progress, from the safety based approach in the US to the entertainment approach in Asia, we now see Telematics services covering insurance, proactive maintenance and maybe more importantly fleet management.
Q: Telematics seems to be another example of convergence technology. Is this so, and what technologies are converging Will telematics itself converge into another market segment A: Telematics basically is the use of location technology with wireless communication to produce tracking, monitoring or navigation.
Recently the convergence has gone far further as telematics applications have converged location with mobile technology and web searches to produce mobile search on portable devices, buddy finders and local wireless communities. We also see telematics as the convergence of GNSS technology with ICT to produce an array of mobile office functions that extend to driver, vehicle and goods management when mixed with RFID technology. Lastly we are now seeing a number of very well financed safety based projects that converge location, mesh networking and sensor technology to make active safety applications in your vehicle communicates with other vehicles as well as the road infrastructure.
Q: Where are the hottest markets for Telematics technology, and where is there expected to be big growth soon A: Telematics is only the technology that supports a set of value added services for the car and the mobile device. The growth and pick up rates are only where the consumers see the value in them.
A lot of telematics services have been touted as the latest killer apps only to disappear from everybody's radar a few months after because consumers saw no value in it. This is what happened to incar PCs 6 or 7 years ago. The telematics hype also wiped out any subscription-based entertainment delivery service in your car and most famously killed the idea that the car manufacturer could make some money or save a lot of it by running complicated Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems. All those models are not dissimilar from the early internet business models and as the web 2.0 generation of applications is picking up the defunct 2001 business model ideas, so is the telematics industry looking back at those great ideas and re-investing in them today. The difference is infrastructure, network speed, silicon cost. What failed 5 years ago might just be reborn and work as the users are now more educated and understand the applications and service opportunities.
Q: So are those the hottest telematics applications today A: Well not exactly. We are still at the stage of iPod synching, and (in Asia) color navigation screens. Yes, there is a long way to go but the seeds have been sewn and the future growth looks promising.
Outside the vehicle, however, the picture is drastically different. Mobile device and mobile phones in particular have been the fastest at picking up on location based opportunities. Despite their small screen and relative low processing capacity they have proved that the future of navigation is mobile and connected. I expect all PND to be SIM enabled before 2010, and therefore becoming default phones. Korea is a very unique market where connectivity works through a multitude of networks standards, but in Europe or the US, it is cellular that will connect PND and it won't be quick.
In the meantime, the mobile phones will become the de-facto platform for all upcoming location enabled services like mobile local search, personalized and pedestrian navigation, proximity marketing and even location enhanced gaming.
Q: Telematics technology seems to have great potential to be used in ways it was not intended. What are your thoughts on the potential abuses of the technology A: There are data security issues when you open up any type of device to a communications infrastructure with a two way flow of data. There is no way around the potential for abuse, theft, sabotage or simply failure. But it is a very similar problem with internet security - the difference is only psychological. People have less issues with you tracking what websites they visit than they do with which petrol stations you visit.
We still need to look at the benefits that the technology will bring as well as its danger. The pay-as-you-drive models that track motorists and charge them insurance premiums based on their driving practices, including penalizing for Friday evening driving and potentially monitoring the speed of the vehicle and matching it to where it was driven, looks quite scary - but it is a service. Are you going to exchange being monitored and pushed to drive safely in exchange for a lower insurance premium Well, its your choice and only time will tell whether this takes off in a big way or whether it appeals only to certain market segments.
Mobile phone tracking for traffic information generation also brings a lot of scared questions. In this case however, the operator managing hundreds of thousand of cells cares very little about each individual one and the information it is using is solely based on where call A is, not who owns cell A.
Q: Where is Telematics technology going to go in the next ten years A: In my personal opinion it will go into phones. The portable device will become the hub that will send the information to the vehicle when and if needed. Eventually telematics will merge into telemetry and pervasive internet. We are already seeing a number of remote monitoring applications in area like manufacturing and utilities. The signs are that assets, consumption or emission monitoring will become commonplace and all manmade objects will be online and connected to each other, not just computers.
