Global automotive telematics market to quadruple

Boom time as 68m cars ship with telematics by 2016



Global shipments of automotive telematics systems are set to rise to 84.4 million units in 2016, up by a factor of more than four from 19.3 million in 2008, according to iSuppli.
“From sending out an automatic distress call after a car crash, to enabling remote diagnosis of engine troubles, telematics can provide enormous benefits to motorists and car makers around the world,” said Anna Buettner, analyst with iSuppli’s automotive research service. “For drivers, telematics can enhance safety, convenience and connectivity. For car OEMs, telematics can add to and improve car functionality and reduce warranty and after-sales costs. That’s why carmakers and consumers are expected to increase their adoption of telematics systems rapidly during the next seven years.”
By 2016, 68.4 million cars will ship with telematics systems installed by OEMs, up from 14.3 million in 2008. This means that 84.6 percent of all cars shipped in 2016 will incorporate telematics systems.
Aftermarket shipments of telematics systems will rise to just under 16 million units in 2016, up from slightly less than 5 million in 2008.
Beyond accident alerts and remote diagnosis, telematics functions span from the wireless integration of third-party devices, to navigation and Location-Based Services (LBS) updates, to theft detection, to engine control software revisions.
The United States is the world’s leading market for telematics in 2009, with 30 percent of all models sold in the country available with installed systems. In comparison, the next two biggest telematics nations, Germany and Italy, have only 20 percent model availability of installed telematics systems.
The U.S. leadership is due to General Motors (GM), which pioneered installed telematics in 1996 with its OnStar service. The company has made OnStar a standard feature on all its cars this year.
“With GM selling 2 million cars with installed telematics per year, competitors have been forced to react,” Buettner said. “In the intervening years, Ford, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Honda, Nissan and Toyota all launched telematics systems.”
Western European telematics volume remains low because no major OEM in the region has made the feature standard on every car. Japan also is deploying telematics in low volumes, and the applications are focused on navigation functionality and infotainment.
However, as telematics becomes more available in other regions, U.S. domination will dwindle. The United States in 2009 accounts for about half of the global installed OEM telematics market. By 2016, the United States will account for about one third of the worldwide market as shipments in other regions soar.

Embedded v. mobile device telematics

Two major types of telematics solutions are being offered on the market: embedded systems, whose functionality is integrated into the headunit of cars; and mobile-device oriented systems, which use a wireless product like a cell phone to communicate information.
Both embedded and mobile device telematics systems are on rapid growth paths. Worldwide OEM embedded telematics systems will grow from nearly 4.8 million units in 2008 to more than 26.8 million systems in 2016.
Meanwhile, global OEM mobile device telematics systems will grow from 9.5 million units in 2008 to more than 41.5 million systems in 2016.

PowerVR moves to HD

Imagination Technologies has launched a video encoder family of IP that provides H.264 High Profile (HP) at HD resolutions.
The newest member of the POWERVR VXE encoder family delivers the highest quality encode ever seen in a synthesisable IP core, and offers the most complete implementation of the High and Main Profile toolsets of any IP core available in the market today, says the company. This translates to improved image quality at all bit rates, and enables ultra-low bitrates to be achieved for encoded streams with minimum degradation from the original source image data.

"With the relentless growth in demand for high quality user-generated content in all forms of mobile devices, we've seen tremendous interest in our VXE HD video encoder products. Our partners have evaluated our advanced encoding algorithms used in VXE380 against many other solutions, and the feedback we're getting indicates we have a winning solution that is the ideal complement to the growing numbers of HD resolution image sensors now being deployed in mobile devices," said Tony King-Smith, VP marketing at Imagination.

POWERVR VXE encodes video sequences and still images to a wide range of compression standards including H.264 High, Main and Baseline Profiles, H.263, MPEG-4, M-JPEG and JPEG. These cores offload the entire video/still encode processing to hardware, minimising host CPU processing load, enabling lowest power solutions without compromising performance. The core is fully supported by an accompanying software stack, which includes an OpenMAX IL compliant API under Linux.
The core is scalable, allowing Full HD video to be encoded, as well as offering the ability to record at extremely high frame rates (e.g. >1200 fps at QVGA) for detailed slow motion capture - one of the most sought after features for encoders today. Support for 4K resolutions is also possible, due to Imagination's unique scalable architecture.
The third generation, intelligent motion search algorithm dramatically reduces memory bandwidth requirements, whilst offering an even larger effective search range to give the best possible video quality and compression ratios. As memory access is one of the key sources of high power consumption for a SoC (System-on-Chip), this reduction in bandwidth also helps lower the overall SoC power requirements.
The IP core contains a small embedded 32-bit META processor, which ensures that the rate control algorithms are both flexible and highly capable, without burden or reliance on the host processor. This flexibility gives designers the ability to meet specific rate control requirements for the most demanding applications.
The VXE380 IP core, like all of Imagination's IP cores, is designed with ease of system integration in mind, requiring minimal external components, supporting memory interfaces optimised for all popular DRAMs including the latest DDR3 devices.
The POWERVR VXE family of encoders is ideal for a wide range of consumer and embedded applications including mobile phones, digital cameras, Blu-Ray disc authoring, portable media players, video conferencing, surveillance, personal navigation devices, personal video recorders and hardware encode accelerators.
The POWERVR VXE380 IP core is available for licensing now.

Low power USB development kit from TI at $49

With a low power digital signal processor, Texas Instruments has managed to develop a development kit in a USB stick which drops the cost of a full-featured emulator and integrated development platform down to $49. This enables rapid creation of DSP applications including portable audio players, voice recorders, IP phones, portable medical devices, biometric USB keys, software defined radios (SDRs), hands-free headsets and metering applications. At this extremely low price point, it is the industry’s lowest cost DSP tool, making development accessible to existing and potential customers, hobbyists, researchers and students.
The TMS320VC5505 eZdsp USB stick development tool simplifies development by providing integrated features such as an on-board XDS100 emulator and on-board audio codec and connectors. Taking advantage of the energy efficient C5505 DSP, the eZdsp requires no other components or cables allowing the entire development tool to be powered by the USB port. Designers simply plug into the USB port of any laptop or workstation for hassle-free development and a simple out-of-the-box experience.
It is based on the C5505 processor, the industry’s lowest power 16-bit DSP with active power consuming less than 0.15 mW/MHz and standby power less than 0.15 mW. An on-board audio codec and connectors allow developers to evaluate many features of the C5505 processor and quickly optimize complex DSP algorithms in terms of performance and power consumption across a variety of design scenarios, and an extension connector allows developers to design and directly connect to daughter cards suitable for their application.
The C5505 eZdsp USB stick development tool is available now $49, which includes a full XDS100 emulator and a target version of the CCStudio v.4 software. Special incentives are available for educators, university students and developers actively participating in TI’s online community.