http://www.berginsight.com/media/BergInsightMMI2006.pdf

Berg Insight's free minireport - Mobile Market Insights 2006 - New growth opportunities for the wireless industry.

Passenger car segment 
Passenger car telematics has started off even slower than the commercial vehicles market. 
Navigation is the most popular application, but most in-vehicle navigation systems receive 
dynamic information over the RDS-TMC broadcasting channel. Tracking and stolen vehicle 
recovery systems are also becoming increasingly common in the premium car segment. 
Offerings appealing to the mass market are however nowhere to be seen. This could change 
in a few years’ time. The European Commission has proposed a pan-European automatic 
emergency call system. The eCall system will require an on-board integrated mobile 
communications and satellite positioning unit to be designed into all new vehicles sold in the 
EU. When activated, the unit will contact a PSAP (Public Safety Answering Point) by calling 
the common European emergency number 112. It will be possible to initiate the emergency 
call service both manually and automatically; the latter triggered by a crash sensor, a 
released airbag or seatbelt pretentioners. Besides providing the vehicle’s position, the system 
will also establish a voice connection with the emergency operator so that the situation can 
be properly evaluated. If needed, including if no response is received, emergency service can 
be sent to the right location at once and valuable time can be saved. Manually initiated 
emergency calls can provide the user with emergency support in case of an accident as well 
as other situations like assault.  
 
The European Commission has set 2009 as the preliminary target date for the launch of eCall. 
However a few years later appears as a more realistic timeline. Many things must fall into 
place before such an initiative can be realised throughout all EU member states. Even though 
the project is officially backed by the European automotive industry organisation ACEA, there 
will most likely to be concerns about the costs for realising eCall. Car manufacturers may find 
it difficult to cope with adding the cost of a telematics unit to the bill of material of to each of 
the 15 million cars sold in the EU annually. Nomadic solutions utilising the driver’s handset 
are therefore being considered for inexpensive models in order to keep costs down. 
Nevertheless, eCall could very well become the mobile communications platform that unfolds 
the European market for automotive telematics services in passenger cars. 

Service trends 
Entertainment accelerate growth, 
mobile navigation services will take off 
 
Value added services are widely hailed as the next growth area for the mobile industry. A 
major shift from voice to data as the main revenue source has been predicted for many years. 
Surely data revenues have increased, but not as quickly as anticipated. As evidence 
accumulates that voice revenues are nearing their peak, the search for alternative sources of 
income becomes most urgent. Fortunately mobile entertainment services are growing at an 
accelerating speed. Moreover location based services such as mobile navigation pick up 
more and more business...

Personal navigation drives development of location based services 
After an initial hype, mobile location based services have lingered for several years in relative 
anonymity. Recently however, increasingly user friendly handsets paired with a more mature 
approach to content services have created the right conditions for launching new offerings on 
the market. Inspired by impressive sales figures for portable navigation devices, service 
providers and mobile operators alike have particularly turned their attention to developing 
personal navigation solutions for mobile phones. Operators such as Vodafone, Mobilkom, 
Telenor and TeliaSonera have recently introduced products which turn mobile phones into 
GPS navigators. Unlike other GPS navigation products they feature dynamic map information 
that is downloaded directly from the wireless network. That enables users to view anything 
from the latest traffic updates to hotels and restaurants on the handset display. 

Appello, TomTom, Wayfinder and Webraska are companies to watch on this market. Each of 
them has developed mobile personal navigation applications that run on smartphones and 
feature-phones assisted by Bluetooth GPS receivers. Digital map and points of interest data is 
stored on internal or external memory cards. The applications are compatible with a wide 
range of mobile application platforms such as Nokia Series 40, Series 60, Series 80 and 
Series 90, Symbian UIQ, Microsoft Windows Mobile and J2ME. That makes the applications 
available for a wide range of models from leading manufacturers, including Nokia, Sony 
Ericsson, Siemens, Qtek and Blackberry. 
 
Satellite positioning technology is required to achieve the accuracy needed for navigation. 
Existing network based positioning platforms which have been implemented by many mobile 
operators can at best achieve an accuracy of around 50 meters, which is insufficient for 
determining the location of an individual at street level. GPS does however have several 
shortcomings such as long setup times and unreliable indoor coverage. Mobile operators can 
improve GPS performance for their customers by implementing A-GPS in their networks. A- 
GPS also facilitates the integration of GPS receivers in handsets and could soon enable 
integrated satellite positioning capabilities in mass market devices. The European Galileo 
system is going to offer even better performance when put into operation in 2010. 

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