Report: 1 in 5 cars will be connected by 2020

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The increased consumption and creation of digital content within cars will lead to sophisticated information and entertainment systems.

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If you buy a car within the next five years, it’s likely that it will be Internet-enabled. That’s the prediction Gartner has shared, anyway. The market research firm has released its latest report that expects there to be approximately 250 million connected cars on the road by 2020, paving the way for new in-vehicle services and automated driving capabilities. In other words, one in five vehicle will boast some sort of wireless network connection.

During the next five years, the proportion of new vehicles equipped with this capability will increase dramatically, making connected cars an integral element of the rapidly-growing Internet of Things (IoT) — an area Gartner forecasts will entail 4.9 billion connected things in use this year and will reach 25 billion by 2020.

“The connected car is already a reality, and in-vehicle wireless connectivity is rapidly expanding from luxury models and premium brands, to high-volume midmarket models,” explained James F. Hines, Gartner Research Director. “The increased consumption and creation of digital content within the vehicle will drive the need for more sophisticated infotainment systems, creating opportunities for application processors, graphics accelerators, displays and human-machine interface technologies. At the same time, new concepts of mobility and vehicle usage will lead to new business models and expansion of alternatives to car ownership, especially in urban environments.”

The proliferation of vehicle connectivity will have implications across the major functional areas of telematics, automated driving, infotainment and mobility services. Driving the adoption of connected car technology is the expansion of high-bandwidth wireless network infrastructure, rising expectations for access to mobile content and better service from smartphones and tablets. While many of the major automakers have rolled out connected cars in a number of limited models, in-vehicle wireless connectivity is rapidly expanding from luxury and premium brands to high-volume mid-market versions. Take for instance, General Motors, Hyundai and Chrysler, who have each partnered with telecoms AT&T, Verizon and Sprint, respectively.

By 2018, two automakers will have announced plans to become technology companies and expand their connected-vehicle value experiences to other industries and devices, Gartner said in a report last year. And over the next five years, at least one auto company will achieve 10% of its total revenues from connected mobility and service offerings.

“The increased consumption and creation of digital content within the vehicle will drive the need for more sophisticated infotainment systems, creating opportunities for application processors, graphics accelerators, displays and human-machine interface technologies,” Hines stated.

As the amount of information being fed into in-car head unit or telematics systems grows, vehicles will be able to capture and share not only internal systems status and location data, but also changes in surroundings in real-time, Computer World writes. Ultimately, your car will become just another part of your mobile data plan.

“To facilitate that kind of shift, connected-vehicle leaders in automotive organizations need to partner with existing ecosystems like Android Auto or Apple CarPlay that can simplify access to and integration of general mobile applications into the vehicle,” Gartner Analyst Thilo Koslowski shared in last year’s report.

The Gartner report follows recent revelations from IBM, who in the company’s Automotive 2025 study found that a majority of executives believe cars will become more personalized for drivers over the next 10 years, but autonomous vehicles and self-driving cars will not yet be ubiquitous. In fact, IBM anticipates that by 2025, vehicles will be intelligent enough to configure themselves to a driver and other occupants. In other words, cars will be able to learn, heal, drive and socialize with others on the road, and their surrounding environment through vehicle-to-vehicle communication.

Without question, the demand for advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) is on the rise as well. According to ABI Research analysts, the market is expected to grow from $11.1 billion last year to $91.9 billion by 2020, hitting the $200 billion mark by 2024. Fueling that growth is the expansion of the technology from high-end luxury vehicles to more affordable cars and mini automobiles. One of the most popular systems on high-end vehicles, adaptive cruise control (ACC), will continue to gain popularity across all vehicle segments, with shipments experiencing a CAGR of 69% between 2014 and 2020.