Apple CarPlay and the Battle for your Car's Infotainment System
Plus, my other favourite announcements from WWDC!
Let’s talk about all those WWDC announcements. But first, the new version of CarPlay has me thinking…
There were lots of cool features and even a brand new M2 MacBook Air announced at WWDC this past week, but the feature announcement that intrigued me most from a technology, business, and strategy POV was the new version of CarPlay.
For those who don’t know, CarPlay is Apple’s take on a car infotainment dashboard. By plugging in your phone (or through wireless Bluetooth support in certain vehicles), CarPlay takes the apps from your iPhone and displays them onto your car’s display in a familiar iPhone grid like interface, complete with Siri hands-free control. At WWDC, Apple touted that it is now available in over 98% of cars in the US, and that 79% of buyers would only consider CarPlay-capable vehicles.
At WWDC, Apple announced a complete refresh of CarPlay that will allow you to connect to your car’s actual instrument panel, so you could hypothetically control the car’s radio and climate, show driving information like speed or current fuel/battery levels, and more. In addition, it would support expanding CarPlay beyond just the main infotainment screen, adapting to different screen sizes and content like your driver dash or heads-up display.
As someone who has followed Apple’s mythical car-project, codenamed Project Titan, since its early rumours in 2014, this next generation had me giddy thinking about its potential to show us Apple’s initial expression into what a car experience could look like. At the same time, I think it brings about interesting business and strategy decisions between software makers like Apple/Google and car manufacturers and I see interesting parallels between the state of car’s infotainment systems and television software.
Over the years, the price of televisions has substantially decreased, as the TV makers have been able to subsidize hardware prices with advertisements embedded into their smart TV software. The only issue with this is that TV makers like LG, Sony, and Samsung don’t make good software; they’re buggy, slow, and often require you to reboot your television. The other issue is fragmentation - in an effort to own the OS and ad revenue, these manufactures have all created slightly different operating systems, causing developers to create half-assed HTML apps that are easily portable between TV OSes, but aren’t as good as natively developed applications. Rather than developing their own televisions (which have notoriously low margins, and long consumer lifecycles) Apple, Google, and other tech companies like Roku and Amazon have created streaming sticks or boxes that you can plug into your TV and run their software.
Car infotainment software is the same idea - have you ever used a car’s built in operating system and thought “wow, this is great”? Probably not... And then comes along the likes of Apple and Google, who rather than build their own car, just allow you to take over your existing car’s software by plugging in your phone.
The diversion I see upcoming is that, as cars eventually become more and more autonomous, they will truly transition to a mobile entertainment device on wheels with an operating system-enabled value chain; you’ll want to download apps like Netflix or Amazon Prime, browse Instagram and shop for products, all while your car takes you from A-to-B. I foresee auto executives drooling thinking about the potential ad revenue and 30% in-app purchase opportunity of this new business model. As such, I think they will be very hesitant to acquiesce and to give Apple this initial deep integration in the fear of setting precedent and future consumer expectations. Many automakers have also already come to the realization that they’re bad at software, and inked deals with Google or Amazon to design UX software.
During WWDC, Apple flashed a slide of car manufacturers who would be supporting this new version of CarPlay, but The Verge reached out to 12 of them and they all had the similar answer/no-answer of “we will look into it”.
So why would Apple announce this, if it has no real manufacturer support? I think it is more of a play to see initial reaction and support from car OEMs and excitement from consumers. The auto industry is notoriously slow moving, with a 4-5 year product roadmap. The cars that will be announced in 18 months are already finalized, so this is definitely a longer-term play. Moreover, I think it is a way for Apple to have two negotiating points with OEMs:
If you want CarPlay in your car, you have to support ALL of the new deep integration features. Since 79% of your consumers say they’ll only consider a CarPlay enabled car as they’re next vehicle, you don’t really have a choice…
Or the more gangster move: support this or we’ll build our own car…
Given the future opportunity at stake and Apple’s current progress with Project Titan (or lack thereof), auto execs might dare them to do the latter.
My Other Favourite WWDC Announcements
iOS 16 Lock Screen
iOS 16 brings about a totally revamped Lock Screen interface so you can add custom wallpaper, change fonts, add widgets and more. Apple also introduced a new kind of notification called Live Activities. Rather than getting bombarded with multiple notifications about status of an Uber ride or the score of my fantasy football game, app developers can now build these new notifications. I really like the idea of making things more glanceable, rather than having to open up my phone and inevitably getting distracted by Instagram or Twitter.
iMessage Updates
Mark messages as unread, edit your typos and unsend messages you sent by mistake! None of these are ground breaking (although Apple did beat Twitter to the editing feature), but are nice improvement of life features that everyone will soon not be able to live without.
Apple Pay Later
I predicted this feature was coming in an earlier blog entry, but Apple officially unveiled its buy-now-pay-later solution. Available in the US at launch, it will allow you to break a payment into four equal parts, over a 6-week period, with no interest. The more interesting storyline is that Apple is forgoing its partnership with Goldman Sachs and handling the lending and the credit checks itself, with its new Apple Financing LCC subsidiary.
Stage Manager
This is the feature I’m most interested to get my hands on (but you need an iPad with an M1 chip… Tim take my money)! For years, Apple has tried to create a multitasking experience that makes the iPad a workhorse like a Mac is. With its latest iteration called Stage Manager, you’ll finally be able to escape the split side-by-side multitasking and have a windowed app experience, in addition to external display support, allowing you to have up to eight apps displayed simultaneously.
MacBook Air with M2
I don’t have much to say about this, other than this is the perfect laptop for most people and you should definitely buy it if you’re in the market for a new Mac. Not to mention the new Midnight Blue colour is gorgeous!
That’s a wrap folks! Hope you all have a great weekend, feel free to share any feedback, and stay tuned for the next edition!