NextWala

The Digital Car and Harman's acquisition of Aha Mobile

 

Harman today announced its acquisition of Aha Mobile, a Venrock portfolio company.  We are quite excited about all the possibilities for Aha to leverage Harman's massive footprint and for Harman to provide a completely new set of differentiated experiences to its customers.  We wish the whole Aha team, including Robert, Max, Rafael, Ryan and Jason the best of luck as they bring Aha's innovative digital car services to millions of cars in the future.  Here's the press release.

I remember thinking about this idea while driving up and down the I-280 from San Francisco to Palo Alto and back everyday in 2007.  I was (very) bored with my car's radio channels as well as frustrated with not being able to access (safely) my own personalized web content while driving.  So I thought, how about an in-car user experience that brings me all sorts of web content, such as my own personalized road traffic report or email or other social feeds?  Out of this was borne the idea for Aha Mobile (the name came later).

Aha's CEO Robert, along with his colleagues, developed this idea further to incorporate a completely audio-based experience; content personalized based on location; interactivity to allow the user to say something that posts back to Facebook, the road traffic feed, etc,; and a back-end platform to aggregate data from across the Web.  I still believe that this is a truly innovative approach to in-car web services.

Our thesis: the digital car

We continue to look to partner with superstar entrepreneurs to drive the digital car forward (no pun intended!).  We are investors in INRIX and Where.  INRIX provides highly accurate traffic services to automotive OEMs, navigation software companies, online map providers, GPS/PND device makers, the public sector and others. Where is a mobile location-based search and advertising company. 

We developed a thesis on investing in the digital car, a megatrend that I believe will play out over the next decade at many levels of the value-chain.  The digital car leverages other megatrends such as pervasive broadband access, smartphone saturation, location and general user addiction to personalized web services.  At that time, in 2007/2008, some of the areas that we found interesting to prospect into included: new map databases, consumer voice apps, voice recognition engines, connected PNDs, location-based services, off-board navigation, connected media services, app stores for the car, and data aggregation.  We believed that some other areas of the digital car had already matured and were therefore not necessarily the right place to invest - these included: PNDs, in-dash operating systems, locationing technologies, broadband connectivity providers, enterprise telematics, and POI data.  Many of these elements are different in other markets, such as China, India, SE Asia, and similar in the EU.

Since then, many, if not all, of these areas have changed quite dramatically, showing how difficult, if not impossible, it is to try and predict the future in tech.  Some of the changes since 2007/2008 that impact the digital car have included: 

• the rise of smartphones (iPhone had just launched and Android was a theory) and app stores
• the rapid growth of Pandora and streaming mobile media in general
• the dramatic price reduction in mobile navigation solutions driven by Google
• the financial crisis and resultant slowdown in automotive sales
• a change in mindset of auto OEMs from telematics (essentially call-center based services such as OnStar) to connected services (such as Ford's Sync service and BMW's ConnectedDrive)
• the peaking of the PND market
• the sales of Navteq and TeleAtlas to device OEMs (Nokia and TomTom, respectively) and the rise of other map databases such as OpenStreetMap and Google's own map database
• the exponential growth in open data access through APIs such as for Twitter, Facebook, Yelp and several databases

There are also some constant themes and frustrations when it comes to the digital car:

• Business model differences between consumer web services and automotive OEMs
• Impedance mismatch between automotive OEMs and consumer web services in terms of iterating on new technologies
• The gap between the promise of voice recognition and its actual performance in the noisy environment of the car
• Slow emergence of standard interfaces and protocols in the car to connected with mobile devices or the Web (I would call the 12V plug as well as auxiliary jack for iPods standard interfaces)

And finally, there are some user-interface concepts that I outlined in these slides that I believe still apply for any in-car experience:

9 Questions for Digital Car Application Developers

View more presentations from Dev Khare.

Cloud Computing meets the Car at Maker Faire

I get excited by mobile services/applications and the mixture of mobile and automobiles is one of the new frontiers of innovation.

Last Friday, I attended a Maker Faire pre-event on Ford's American Journey 2.0, an interesting project run at the University of Michigan.  Dale Dougherty, founder of Maker Faire, was a fantastic host for the event - great to meet him!

TJ Giuli was managing student teams and presented a set of cloud-based applications developed by UMich students to run in Ford cars as they were driven from Detroit to Silicon Valley.   (Good BusinessWeek interview with TJ here).  These apps included virtual road rally (reading out information on pre-selected waypoints that the car is passing by), ride sharing, caravaning (sharing info such as spotting of police cars, needing to stop for restroom break etc. between cars) and car auto-tweeting (see @AJtheFiesta).

I sat on a panel with Venkatesh Prasad (technical leader of Ford’s Infotronics Research & Advanced Engineering team, the birthplace of Ford SYNC), Tim O'Reilly, and TJ Giuli. 

Here's the video of the event (overview of apps start at 5:30, panel starts at 17:00). I've listed the main themes/takeaways below the video.

Some of the themes that emerged in the panel included:

- integration of mobile device to the car for HMI integration as well as passing data back and forth

- impedance mismatch between development clockspeed of devices/mobile apps versus automobiles/embedded in-dash apps

- the car as a data source / data creator, including location, performance data, traffic conditions, fuel levels, etc.  Integration with OBD II interface and car sensors.

- user interface homegenization between laptops, mobile devices and car dashboards i.e. the expectation of users that interface technologies (such as touchscreens, swiping, voice recognition, gesture recognition etc.) should work on mobile devices as well as in-dash digital screens

- the network of cars as a collective computing asset

- certified/gated app distribution into cars (e.g. in-car app stores)

- interaction of car with surrounding environment (e.g. intelligent parking infrastructure)

- innovation generated around standards in the car (standards such as the 12V plug, the OBD II interface, the auxiliary jack, the 1-DIN/2-DIN in-dash area etc.)

RIM expands Smartphone Wars into the Car by Acquiring QNX

Today, RIM announced their acquisition of QNX, a leading automotive operating system company.

"RIM is excited about the planned acquisition of QNX Software Systems and we look forward to ongoing collaboration between Harman, QNX and RIM to further integrate and enhance the user experience between smartphones and in-vehicle audio and infotainment systems," said Mike Lazaridis, President and Co-CEO at RIM.

Big move. Shows how the digital car market continue to heat up this year.  In the battle for smartphone dominance, RIM has just expanded the playing field from generic mobile users to  mobile users in the car, a market with 600 million cars worldwide. 

The market continues to grow and many players are jockeying for prime position (i.e. socket wins with the auto OEMs, as well as broader user adoption. RIM/QNX competition includes:

• Microsoft - their Win CE OS has got 80% market share with personal navigation devices and some on-board nav systems.
• Nokia - working with German auto makers to integrate their Terminal Mode protocol to let Nokia devices communicate with cars.  Announcement with Continental
• Google - integration with BMW, Audi for Google Earth etc. Announcement with Audi.
• Garmin - integration with VW etc. Announcement with VW.
• TomTom - integration with Renault and other auto OEMs. Announcement with Renault.
• Apple - iPod has already been integrated into most new cars through the audio jack. Apple is now working to let steering-wheel controls control the iPhone (music, etc).  More on Apple car integration here.

I think the market has really been galvanized by Ford - with their SYNC offering, they can integrate with and connect to the Internets through mobile devices.  @ CES, they announced integrations with Pandora, Twitter, etc.

IMO, where this is headed is that the closed-eco-system high-margin $2K+ in-dash nav systems provided by the auto OEMs are facing serious competition from the more open eco-system of mobile devices + third-party software developers.

And the battlefield in the smartphone space has just expanded from generic mobile users to users in the car.  Let the games begin!

PS: There is a little question in my mind as to whether this could be the beginning of RIM's proprietary OS play to compete with iPhone OS, Android, Symbian, Windows Mobile, etc. Hard to believe this could be true since the QNX RTOS has a bigger footprint and is not adapted to mobile devices.

A secret to success for your mobile application

[Photo courtesy of Rob Enslin]

As an investor, I get to see several new companies every week.  User experience is a key dimension of success for these companies, especially the mobile applications companies.  I can't tell you how many times I see UIs that are completely cluttered and don't get to the crux of the value-add fast enough.

Now the end-user perspective: In the last few months, when at home, I'm now spending more time on my mobile device than on my laptop.  Whether it's for checking email, doing a web search, getting directions, reading blogs, looking at photos, listening to music etc., my mobile device has become my preferred computing device.  So I asked myself why this was the case.  Here’s why:

Other than the need to use a smart/super-phone such as the iPhone or Android-based device with a 3G or Wifi broadband connection, the key is that the app immediately gets me to the #1 value-add of the app... and in most cases, I don't need two fingers - just my thumb.  Some examples:

• Flixster: The first menu item is "Movies I Want to See". Instant gratification.
• Google Reader: Get me to a directory where I can read all unread posts or post by category immediately.  Great.
• Pandora: Immediately starts playing the channel that I was playing when I exited the app the last time. Perfect.
• INRIX (full disclosure: Venrock is an investor) - on the iPhone, as soon as I launch the INRIX Traffic! application, it zooms in to where I am and displays road traffic flow and incident data around me.  Great.
• Gowalla: Immediately finds places around where I am and lets me check in. Done.
• Echofon: Shows the latest stream of tweets in reverse chronological order immediately. Sets my screen at the oldest tweet that I haven't yet read. Perfect.

I wish some of these mobile apps did a better job (I still like them a lot, though):

• LinkedIn:  The latest release of the LinkedIn iPhone app is a huge step up from what LinkedIn had before. What you get now is a laundry list of functionality to pick from e.g. "Status", "Connections", "Favorites", "Invitations", "Themes" etc.  Why not pick one of these items as the first screen to drop users into?
• Tripit: The mobile app is fantastic value-add. However, why not drop me into my current trip immediately instead of showing me a menu listing all my trips?

I think the wired Web has spoiled developers in one dimension - it's given them too much real estate to play with and, as a result, they have crammed too much into that interface. An example is Flixster - unlike the mobile app where I immediately can get to 'Movies I'd like to Watch', on flixster.com, I have to list all the movies I've rated and then sort them by categorization - it takes too long and is very frustrating.   The main value-add for me on Flixster is to get to the 'Movies I'd like to Watch' list.  So effectively, Flixster has put a giant barrier between my in-the-moment need and its gratification.

The moral of the story: If you're building a mobile app, think carefully about what this one key value-added feature is and immediately get your users to that portion of the app when they launch the app.  Preferably with no clicks but at most one click. 

Do you want ads in the backseat of your taxi?

I don't know why but I seem to be morbidly interested in how taxis are getting connected (I have a previous post on the Digital Taxi here).  Taxi fleets have been early adopters of connectivity technology for purposes of logistics/coordination and they are pioneering the integration of multiple connected devices in the car for commercial purposes.  And New York City's taxi fleets are the earliest of early adopters, compared to other cities in the US.

Now, this early adopter community is turning to back-seat advertising. I was in New York City two weeks ago and noticed, during my frequent taxi-rides, that virtually every taxi there has an interactive digital screen in the back-set, in addition to a card-swipe to pay by credit card and receive a printed receipt.  The devices have been built by Verifone. 

Turns out there are two competing offerings across New York. One side includes Verifone (Transportation Systems) in partnership with WABC.  The other side includes Creative Mobile Technology together with ClearChannel and NBC Universal.  A New York Times article on this is here.

The real twist in this tale seems to be that cab drivers hate this system with a passion - they have to listen to the same news snippets and advertising jingles over and over again. It drives them crazy!!

Local content (GPS tracking, local weather, celebrity news etc.): This screen has a map with the taxi's location on it (presumably tracked through GPS). Note the tabs on top for news, weather, sports, dining, etc.  Live TV is available (Accuweather news in this screenshot) - New York's local ABC affiliate WABC is running this Taxi TV network. 

Display and video ads: Advertising is a prominent part of the screen real-estate - I noticed a healthy distribution of ads (not just house ads), including ads from the Red Cross, New York Times and others. I called the number listed on the screen and it directs to WABC's ad sales team. The New York Times suggests that all 13,000 of the city's taxi cabs are equipped with some sort of interactive display technology, whether from Verifone or others.  Let's assume each cab is running for 12 hours a day - this amount to 156,000 hours of viewer time per day or roughly 57M viewer-hours per year which makes it a nice little property (a back-seat passenger is somewhat captive and so this viewer-hour may be worth more to the network than the equivalent time spent in front of a TV at home).