Reasons Why I am Optimistic for Portable CPAA Device While no Need to Fear License Issue

Portable CPAA (Aka CarPlay and Android Auto function) device is getting increasingly popular in recently, it has been emerging since last year and likely toward becoming a dominant in-car device for after market electronics which has faded alot in these two years.

Though It's not something revolutionary or disruptive innovation like previous PND or dash cam which could significantly improve driving experience even change driver's behavior, and frankly it's not a technology newly unveiled, Apple launched CarPlay about 10years ago (2013) while Android Auto was in 2015, both were initially pre-installed in the car. at beginning stage it's only available on few models  of high-end brand car or some after-market in-dash unit and with very high price, to say, it’s nice but not for massive consumers.

Now, however, the situation is changed, the tipping point for CPAA togo volumes is coming. WHY?

1, Firstly let's assume there is no need to tell the advantage or benefit to use CPAA function while driving, it’s good enough even perfectly assist driving experience , w/t spending hundreds of thousands to buy a EV or luxury car, only with least spending you could enjoy the most advanced technology by leverage the redundancy performance from the daily-used phone, isn'tit?

2, It's truly convenient,  just plug and play, the installation and connection is so easy, exactly same as previous PND, like for dummies.

3, Most important, The pricing point is truly marketable now, factory price comes to   dozens of dollars with multiple features include dual channel dash cameras, and there is still space to reduce the cost if market demand goes up.

Some customers express concerns about license issue,  that one day Apple would impose same policy on CarPlay device like they did on  iPhone periphery accessories, for instance,through OTA upgrading firmware, some power cables or chargers would out of work without MiFi chipset inside. Well, theoretically, that could happen because it seems a good approach to make money, however, the likelihood is super tiny even zero based on following points:

1. The market scale of this CarPlay device is too small to attract Apple’s attention, as of now the volume in total only reach to hundreds thousands magnitude which is nothing for a company like Apple,  unlikely on strategy layer they will invest resource to look into it and take action, that will be no sense from beneficial angle of view.

2. Actually, on the contrary, Apple might hope that the market of this device to expand, the bigger the better, because automotive is totally another battlefield in which they are competing with other tech giants on a different level, for example, CarPlay is not accessible on Tesla and other well-known brand' EV, they all wish to create own closed ecosystem and exclude other' s OS, in long term view, big data, cloud service.,etc have huge commercial value potentially.

Don't forget Apple even is ambitious to occupy all car's screen even instrument cluster in future, they already released that demo in an event last year.

3. Being top brand of consumer electronics, Apple have to consider their user's experience and feelings, if they blocked so-called unlicensed CarPlay device, avast number of in-dash units installed in past years would not work with CarPlay feature, it will bring big negative impact on user's driving life, wouldn't that cause bad impression to Apple's image? Wouldn’t they think it's too risky of using products around Apple?

4. In normally, there will be a transition period if finally license component is mandatory for CarPlay devices, the industry would have 3 years or longer to react if Apple do that announcement.

5. What's more, presently there is no channel to get such formal license even if you wanner everything to be compliance with regulations, because nothis product category exists in official list. As checked from their website, only brands of car maker are listed with CarPlay , and as far as we learned from industry, Apple will only authorize car marker for CarPlay since last year, no longer for tier-1 OEMs.

6. To say the least, from us factory side, we still have upgrading OTA package to resolve any possible software failure, including failure caused by license issue.

All in all, don’t worry about license issue and call McValley totalknew opportunities for in-car electronics.