Electronics News by Industry Sector

NFC and Bluetooth: Complementary or Competitive?

Connectivity is an area in the automotive electronics segment that is expanding signi?cantly and is expected to trigger further incremental semiconductor usage in vehicles...

New Technologies Add Value to Check-in Services

Check-in services are growing in popularity, with offerings from Facebook Places, Gowalla and Foursquare that allow users to enter their location from a mobile device in order to...

Multicore Trends in Automotive Offer Cost Savings, Higher Performance

The automotive industry needs to change its architectural approach in developing vehicle electronics systems. The two main drivers for change—the need to reduce the number of...

Is Technology Keeping Us Safer on the Roads or Steering Us in the Wrong Direction?

According to a study released just a few days ago from The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and State Farm Insurance, the impact of teen driver crashes extends far beyond teen drivers...

Augmented Reality Enters Mobile Navigation

Mobile navigation application providers have been busy integrating features into their software previously found only on portable navigation devices...

Portable Navigation Market to Peak in 2011

The form factor war in the navigation space is heating up in early 2011, as rising sales of tablets and smart phones with integrated global positioning system (GPS) capability cut into demand...

PND Pricing Hits Bottom on Black Friday

Black Friday ended as a shootout for the two leading suppliers of portable navigation devices (PND) in the U.S. market, as Garmin and TomTom fought to wrest precious purchasing dollars...

Free Navigation as Indirect Revenue

Turn-by-turn navigation has become an essential part of today’s mobile smart phone ecosystem. Until recently, this type of application was a high-end feature that allowed providers to...

Carriers are Back in LBS Space

Most wireless carriers have opened their location APIs to third-party Location Based Services (LBS) platform providers, but others still restrict location access...

Wireless Carriers Pursue Varying Strategies in Germany

Characterized by its large size and intense competition among Deutsche Telekom (DT), Vodafone and Telefonica/ O2, the German market represents one of the most interesting...

TomTom Enters China’s PND Market

After years of sitting on the sidelines, Dutch manufacturer TomTom NV recently entered China’s Portable Navigation Device (PND) market. But with PND sales in the country...

RIM BlackBerry Torch’s OS 6 to Play Central Role in LBS

With the introduction of its new Torch smart phone, Research in Motion Ltd. also rolled out its BlackBerry OS 6 operating system, a key development that positions the BlackBerry line...

Google as Internet Map Service Provider Left Out in the Cold in China

The Chinese government’s announcement in May of new regulations for Internet map services will make it harder for foreign companies to obtain licenses that allow them to operate...

The Smart Phone Craze is ‘App’ealing to the Automotive Environment

In a world of constant development, smart phone applications, or apps, are no exception, and the race is on to see who will provide the next killer app and on which platform it will launch. For the ?rst...

Android vs. iPhone: Pros and Cons of the Two Major Mobile Software Platforms

At the recent Google I/O 2010 event, Google Inc. made a series of compelling announcements related to its Android operating system: More than 60 Android smart phone models are now...

Smart Phones Become the New LBS Battleground

With smart phones emerging as the strategic computing platform for the next decade, the usage of smart-phone-based OEM and aftermarket on-board navigation systems is set to soar by a factor of...

Connected PND Market on the Rise in Western Europe

The increasing popularity of smart phones has spurred the makers of Portable Navigation Devices (PND) to offer connected PNDs, a market that is expected to expand by...

Getting Cloud Content in the Car

Automotive infotainment is gaining lots of traction these days thanks to the smart phone, changing expectations among customers on what they wish to do in cars and what they desire...

What Can Automotive Infotainment Take from the Apple iPhone OS 4?

The automotive industry increasingly is scrutinizing smart phones as well as software-intensive electronics systems, which feature a tiered system and software...