After Project Titan failure, Apple’s last hope to crack the auto industry is CarPlay

Apple CarPlay (Image: Apple, Porsche)

Apple’s new CarPlay interface was originally designed to fend off Android, but now, after the decade-long Project Titan(ic) ended in ignoble failure, it’s Apple’s last hope to conquer the automotive industry.

Mark Gurman for Bloomberg News:
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Now that Apple has shelved plans for its own car, CarPlay has arguably taken on even more importance: It’s the company’s only hope of seriously cracking the automotive market.

When Apple decided to revamp CarPlay, it was worried about Android… [A] few years after both Android Auto and CarPlay hit the market, Google took a major leap by introducing Android Automotive. Though this software doesn’t look radically different than Android Auto, it’s installed in the car itself. That means it’s an integrated system that can take over a vehicle’s screens and gauges without the need to connect a phone.

Over the past few years, this approach has swept the car world. Polestar, Porsche, BMW, Volkswagen, Ford, Lucid, Stellantis and General Motors now offer cars with the Android operating system built-in. After just seven years, Android Automotive is the market leader — with an estimated 35% of the car operating system market.

The new CarPlay is a response to that… There is one big difference, though: The new CarPlay still runs on the iPhone and isn’t a new OS embedded in the vehicle…

This limited rollout also has focused on very high-end cars. In fact, the only model confirmed to be getting the new CarPlay is the Aston Martin DB12, which costs roughly $245,000 and up. (Porsche hasn’t said which model is getting the feature.) That doesn’t give the impression that the new CarPlay is about to take over the auto industry… The clock is ticking. If Apple doesn’t quickly get more automakers to adopt the new CarPlay, it will certainly lose ground to Android

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MacDailyNews Take: If Apple were smart (and maybe they’re already doing this), they would incentivize automakers to widely adopt their next-gen CarPlay with funding, engineering help, marketing, etc. CarPlay is a selling point, as most automakers already know, but this next-gen CarPlay takes some time and money to integrate it widely throughout a vehicle, so Apple would be wise to help it along to the point where automakers would be fools to say no.
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