The Mercedes App Moment—Weekly Brief 2.27.12

In this week's Brief: Mercedes-Benz, Daimler, OnStar, Telefónica, PROTON, Yes, Bosch, Wild River, Jungo, and Ixonos

Mercedes-Benz unveiled "Digital DriveStyle,” an app that allows drivers of the new A-Class to fully integrate iPhones into their in-vehicle user experience.

The app works in tandem with a special drive kit for the iPhone and makes all key iPhone content accessible on the in-vehicle display. Drivers can control the device via the controller on the center armrest.

Mercedes says it will soon enable access to the voice-based intelligent companion Siri in the vehicle, allowing natural speech input to send messages, select music tracks, and check the weather forecast or stock prices.

Daimler says the new user interface design “means that Mercedes-Benz is now able to offer the Facebook generation its natural home on four wheels.”

Daimler also announced that Parking Finder and Morningstar Finance will be the first two apps available in its new App Shop.

The Apps for COMAND Online shop is expected to launch by the end of March, 2012. Mercedes says it plans to launch roughly a dozen new apps in the shop each year.

Telefónica agreed to provide M2M connectivity to OnStar as it expands to markets outside of the United States, Canada, and China.

OnStar will rely on Telefónica's extensive international GSM mobile standard network and its M2M automotive expertise to offer key services such as automatic crash notification, emergency services, turn-by-turn navigation, diagnostics, and remote mobile connectivity.

"OnStar is growing its global footprint,” says Jon Hyde, director of OnStar Global Expansion. “This partnership is one of the vital first steps in that process."

PROTON, Malaysia’s national car maker, and Yes, one of the world’s most advanced 4G networks, announced a collaboration to offer Malaysia’s first 4G Internet cars.

The two leading brands will collaborate in a partnership utilizing each other’s strengths in vehicle engineering and mobile internet connectivity to take advantage of new technologies, applications and services that will make high-speed mobile 4G connectivity a standard feature in future new Proton models.

The soon-to-be launched sedan, the P3-21A, will be the first model to benefit from the collaboration.

Bosch released version 1.5 of its navigation app for the iPhone and iPad. The app is distinguished for its graphical sophistication and its 3D landmarks. The new version includes a stopover option and the integrated “flinc” ride-sharing service.

Anyone who uses the mobile ride-sharing service will be notified by the Bosch navigation system while underway if there is someone nearby who would like to ride along to the same destination.

If drivers accept the suggestion, they’ll be automatically guided to wherever the person is waiting and then to the final destination of the ride.

Mobile and embedded software provider Wind River enhanced its VxWorks safety solutions with new safe and secure partitioning, which enables workload consolidation of safety-certified applications alongside Linux and Windows applications on single- and multi-core processors.

The partitioning capability is designed and implemented for safety certification and decoupling the lifecycle of certified and non-certified applications.

This increases innovation of non-certified applications and reduces ongoing system certification costs while enabling the benefits of consolidation such as reduced device size, weight and power consumption.

Jungo joined forces with the Finnish mobile solutions company Ixonos to provide a complete end-to-end MirrorLink solution for in-vehicle infotainment implementers in the mobile and automotive industries.

The pre-integrated MirrorLink solution will reduce the development cycles and R&D costs of Tier-1 implementers of automotive IVI systems and provide interoperability for MirrorLink support.

The joint solution is based on MediaCore, Jungo’s automotive connectivity middleware, and Ixonos’ IVI Connectivity Solution, which supports MirrorLink.