SpotOn GPS is based on a platform from LocatioNet that has been white-labeled by international carriers and service providers including Bouygues France, Orange Israel, Vodafone Romania and Telegate Germany. TechnoCom has licensed the platform for the U.S. market.

The hosted solution delivers customizable interactive and location-aware advertising, offers, coupons, and loyalty building promotional messages. It provides access to international local search databases, and text and voice prompted instructions in 13 languages, with more being added.

“Early evidence suggests location-based advertising, or LBA, yields significantly higher conversion rates with direct response modes, such as click-to-locate and click-to-navigate, compared to non-location-based advertising,” said ABI Research practice director Dominique Bonte. “LBA and navigation are a winning combination, mutually reinforcing each other. For the end-user ad-funded navigation represents a highly valued balance between exposure to advertising and access to reduced-cost, or potentially free, navigation, thus driving adoption of both.”

At the Telematics Update conference in Novi, Michigan last week, QNX demonstrated a multi-node infotainment system with integrated Pandora support.

Pandora senior vice president Jessica Steel said Pandora is pleased to partner with QNX, “because we believe our service is essential to achieving the goal of a truly personalized infotainment experience in the car.” She added, “By offering QNX-based infotainment systems equipped with the Pandora service, automakers will allow drivers and passengers to enjoy the same personalized radio experience on the road that they now enjoy at home or at work.”

The QNX CAR program offers technologies including a connected application platform, sample applications, reference implementations, and a mechanism for delivering software updates and new features to the vehicle. The application platform includes integrations with consumer media devices, Bluetooth, content management, and other third-party technologies in addition to Pandora Internet radio.

Ken Klein, Wind River chairman, president, and chief executive officer, said Wind River will align its software expertise more tightly to Intel’s platforms.

RBC technology includes a compact antenna for use on cars, trucks and SUVs. The antenna provides continual coverage thanks to an advancement that overcomes line-of-sight obstacles such as overpasses, buildings, trees or tunnels. RBC will distribute the AT&T CruiseCast service via a network of automotive dealers, consumer electronics retailers, and other businesses that specialize in automotive accessories.

UIEvolution specializes in mobile convergence technology. Its customers include AT&T, ESPN, Walt Disney Company, E! Networks, FOX, MySpace, and CBS. Tweddle has a long history of creating and publishing car owners manuals and related materials. Its clients include BMW, Chrysler, Ford, General Motors, Nissan, and Toyota.

“With myCar, UIE Automotive is delivering on the promise of the connected driver,” said UIE Automotive General Manager Stephen Fishburn. “By bringing vehicle and owner information, location based services, and interaction with the vehicle over both long and short range wireless networks to the consumer’s mobile phone, UIE Automotive is delivering a new class of mobile application that enables the automaker to deliver relevant content and connected services without impacting the vehicle’s product development cycle.”

“Service is an important customer-relationship strategy for automakers and a key profit center for dealers,” added Tweddle Group chief executive officer Andrew Tweddle. “myCar automatically alerts vehicle owners when service is required, encouraging customers to proactively contact dealers for service appointments and to maintain their service schedules. At the same time, automakers are assured that customers will have information to maintain their vehicles, which is an important factor in ensuring customer satisfaction with the product.”

At the Telematics Update conference in Novi, Michigan last week, Airbiquity also announced partnerships with Telenor Connexion and TelecityGroup, both related to expansion of Airbiquity’s business in Europe.

“We saw the clear need to better define our company positioning and make Airbiquity ready for future growth in connected services worldwide,” said president and chief executive officer Kamyar Moinzadeh.

To support its service provider positioning, the firm launched Airbiquity Connected Services, consisting of customized offerings in more than 50 categories, such as Safety & Security, Maintenance & Care, Productivity & Efficiency, Luxury & Convenience, and Entertainment & Fun. Each can be implemented on embedded wireless modules in cars and PND devices or through a user’s mobile phone via a Bluetooth connection. “Airbiquity is now able to tailor solutions that address every embedded, portable or converged connectivity requirement on a global level,” Moinzadeh said.

Airbiquity’s partnership with Telenor Connexion enables vehicle connectivity for connected services applications across Europe. Telenor Connexion will provide international wireless GPRS communication services for machine-to-machine and telematics applications to VIAaq, Airbiquity’s managed data services platform.

The agreement provides an end-to-end subscriber management process that includes the activation, deactivation and monitoring of SIM cards over Telenor’s GPRS and 3G networks across Europe. Airbiquity’s VIAaq solution will manage the authentication, billing and provisioning of services between vehicle and server.

“Our agreement with Telenor Connexion will significantly enhance Airbiquity’s connected services portfolio in Europe,” said Moinzadeh. He added that through the partnership, “Airbiquity can provide unparalleled two-way data transfer to and from vehicles.”

Airbiquity’s partnership with TelecityGroup, a data center provider, enables Airbiquity to offer VIAaq throughout Europe at the same level available in the U.S. VIAaq will be housed in a secure TelecityGroup facility with remote monitoring and 24/7 on-call resources to deal with alerts and troubleshooting. “Our European automotive, PND, and fleet partners wishing to differentiate their products through connectivity will now be able to do so quickly,” Moinzadeh said.

Herbert Halamek, Continental vice president, sales and portfolio, said Continental will work with automakers to create a new business model that includes partnering with third party developers to write and certify applications for the car in much the same way that developers use Android to create applications for mobile devices.

Halamek said drivers and passengers will be able to use the applications to personalize their vehicles by safely downloading information and content from the web to the dash. Continental will work with both OEM customers and application developers to ensure that information brought into the car is integrated in a balanced, thoughtful, secure and safety-minded way.

Continental plans to develop automotive hardware and a software solution, extending tools and Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) into the automotive space for third-party developers.

Continental initially plans to focus its efforts on developing a set of core applications that will allow drivers to take the Internet with them anytime, anywhere. Applications are being designed to provide drivers with contextually relevant information to make life easier and better.

Continental cited as one example enabling a car to find friends in a driver’s personal network, displaying their location, and navigating to them via real-time traffic information.

AutoLinQ will also enable consumers to monitor and control certain vehicle functions from a mobile phone; check the vehicle status, change certain vehicle settings, and customize individual driver preferences from a laptop or home PC.

The firms said their lighting strategies would be enabled by camera processing abilities that include vehicle detection, on-coming and preceding light source analysis, and range estimations. The technologies define optimal lighting profiles for drivers to maximize viewing ranges under most conceivable conditions.

Mobileye core vision processing capabilities include lane departure warning systems, vehicle detection, high beam assist, and traffic sign recognition. The firm’s technology has been deployed by automakers including Volvo (S80, XC70, and V70), BMW (5-Series, 6-Series, and 7-Series), and General Motors (Buick Lucerne, and Cadillac DTS and STS). The Visteon system will analyze Mobileye’s data and convert it to useful information for its headlamp systems to add higher levels of intelligence and functionality.

“Adding intelligence to lighting systems fits naturally with the current path of optimizing the high beam usage in the current high beam-assist systems introduced by car makers,” said Dr. Gideon Stein, Mobileye’s chief scientist.

Dr. Rainer Neumann, Visteon’s director, global business development for lighting, added that “With the additional data that Mobileye can provide, headlight usage can be elevated to a higher functional level, allowing the driver to gain maximum viewing range under most conditions and driving scenarios.”

The MediaCore architecture includes hardware- and software-agnostic middleware that eliminates the need for in-house platform development. The software design enables seamless porting to any environment and re-use of the foundation software blocks across multiple platforms.

Oren Manor, business director of Jungo’s connectivity unit, said MediaCore unifies access to any media source that utilizes USB network transports, including devices such as the Apple iPod, MP3/MP4 players, flash drives, local hard disks, CDs/DVDs and mobile phones.

“All connected media sources are filtered through a media gateway and controlled via an intuitive, unified API,” Manor said. “This eliminates the complexity of direct protocol implementations and enables a single application to control and access all media sources.”

He added that manufacturers of in-car infotainment systems have to maintain native support for myriad devices through their platforms, but MediaCore is intended to provide unified middleware that enables manufacturers to keep pace with device support requirements, thus shortening product development cycles and associated costs.

Native support for advanced media protocols such as MTP and Apple iPod is enabled through Jungo’s media API reduction technology, which allows applications to select and play songs using only three function calls.

Off-the-shelf support for MediaCore is available for operating system and processor platforms including QNX, Win CE, Linux, μitron, VxWorks, VDK, Renesas, Freescale, Analog Devices and TI.