Vol. 24, No. 9◆◆ hansenreport.com November 2011 MirrorLink Smartphone Sound Engineering for Electric Vehicles Standardization: Difficult Apple and Google Not Onboard uct management or marketing to roll The Car Connectivity Consortium MirrorLink out into handsets.” Samsung, An Emerging Field Ripe for Innovation (CCC) backing the MirrorLink which holds the leading share of “We started from a blank page. There smartphone connectivity standard issued a smartphone shipments with 24% of the was no history on this topic,” declared press release earlier this fall that was a global market in the third quarter, accord- Nicolas Misdariis, head researcher of the little misleading. The release stated that ing to Strategy Analytics, is a member of sound perception and design team at the consortium is “backed by 60% of the the consortium but declined to be inter- IRCAM (Institut de Recherché et Coor- automotive market and 60% of the viewed on behalf of this story. dination Acoustique/Musique) Centre smartphone market, worldwide.” More Among the handset makers, only Pompidou, Paris. He was describing the precisely stated, the consortium members MirrorLink’s chief sponsor, Nokia, is pub- assignment his team undertook two years collectively hold 60% share of the auto- licly committing to the standard, and they ago when Renault asked the institute to motive and smartphone markets. While are doing so in a big way. “All Symbian help create sound for the Zoe, one of four the CCC does have some pretty influen- phones from last year onwards will be new electric vehicles from Renault. The tial members, most notably General compatible with MirrorLink, with a Zoe is due in mid-2012. Creating the Motors, Volkswagen, Toyota, Hyundai, download from the Ovi store,” said direc- sounds that electric vehicles will make is a PSA and Honda among carmakers, and tor of Nokia Automotive Floris van de rare opportunity for developers in auto- Nokia, Samsung, HTC, LG Electronics Klashorst. Nokia’s Ovi app store did not motive electronics to work in an area that and Motorola Mobility among device yet offer any MirrorLink products in early is entirely new. makers, membership does not mean a November of this year. Nokia ranked At speeds above 20 km/h, electric ve- company is necessarily committed to put- third in global market share, with 14% of hicles make about as much sound as cars ting MirrorLink-enabled products into the the smartphone market in Q3 2011. with internal combustion engines, due to market. The level of support for the stan- Early this year, Nokia announced that wind and tire noise. But because EVs dard varies widely. it will switch from the Symbian platform make very little noise at low speeds, they For example, I was told by a well- to adopt Microsoft’s operating system for must generate sound electronically so pe- placed source that HTC has a MirrorLink new smartphones to better compete with destrians and bicyclists will hear when a membership only to track what is going Apple’s iPhone and smartphones using vehicle is approaching. The sound should on. I was also told that MirrorLink proto- Google’s Android operating system. vary according to the vehicle’s speed and types developed by LG Electronics and “[While] the first of these Nokia Windows acceleration to give more auditory clues to Samsung were only research projects, and phones will not support MirrorLink, in its approach. Despite the need to alert that “there is no commitment from prod- Turn to MirrorLink, page 2 pedestrians, the EV sound should not be so noisy that carmakers miss an opportu- MirrorLink Connectivity Architecture nity to contribute to a quieter soundscape. Virtual Network Computing (VNC) is used to replicate the phone’s display and to control the And importantly, because the sound will smartphone from the vehicle’s switches and touch screens. In order to be independent of the become inseparable from the vehicle’s physical transport mechanism, brand identity, it needs to evoke very MirrorLink MirrorLink uses Internet protocol positive impressions. RTP & BT VNC technologies. It supports legacy Audio Display & User Input Another requirement adding to the wireless solutions including Bluetooth project’s difficulty was that the sound had UPnP Application Discovery & Configuration Hands Free Profile (HFP) and to please many important people at Advanced Audio Distribution Profile Renault, all of whom have strong opin- Internet Protocol (A2DP). Universal Plug and Play ions about what a Renault electric vehicle BT (UPnP) is used to give access to only a ought to sound like. Upper management Audio WLAN USB 2.0 Bluetooth limited set of applications. The wired would have the final say, but the people USB connection supports charging. who tune exhaust systems for sound, the RTP: Real-time Transport Protocol; BT Audio: Bluetooth Audio; Turn to Sound, page 8 WLAN: Wireless Local Area Network Source: Car Connectivity Consortium MirrorLink... Continued from page 1 the future we are committed to include mented. But I haven’t seen it as a ‘must’ “This is similar to how Apple sees itself MirrorLink in Nokia Windows phones,” feature to be implemented right now. The in this industry. Apple has their propri- said Mr. van de Klashorst. Microsoft de- question remains how much compatibility etary standard, iPod Out. They are all clined our invitation to say whether or [with smartphones] will there be. Mobile about controlling the user experience. I not it is backing MirrorLink; it is not a devices don’t support MirrorLink on a don’t see them changing that philosophy.” member of the CCC. broad enough basis,” he said, adding, Google and Apple both declined our re- The German Five carmakers, Daimler, “MirrorLink really needs to be supported peated invitations to comment on Audi, Porsche, Volkswagen and BMW, by the maker of the operating system; it whether or not they will support had initially supported Terminal Mode clearly needs to be rooted into the capa- MirrorLink. (now MirrorLink) through the CE4A bilities of the operating system.” Samsung presented two prototype consortium, but it is not clear how much Mr. Teichner has joined Loewe, the MirrorLink-compatible Android support they are giving it now. Audi, German high-end home entertainment smartphones at the Car Connectivity Porsche and BMW are not members of manufacturer, as a member of the execu- Summit 2011 in Chicago in September. the Car Connectivity Consortium. “I tive board and CTO. According to Mika Rytkönen, Nokia’s don’t see a big drive by the German director of industry collaboration and Car carmakers to adopt the technology,” said No Apple, No Google Connectivity Consortium president, Harman International CTO and co-presi- Among smartphone makers, the most “Some of the device makers in the An- dent of Harman Automotive, Sachin notable absentees from the CCC are droid camp have created workarounds so Lawande. “MirrorLink is a good attempt, Google, whose Android operating system Android licensees can build support for but it’s not quite there yet.” underpins 43.4% of the global smartphone MirrorLink.” It’s not clear if those “Many of the people who are partici- market, and Apple, whose iOS operating workarounds were sanctioned by Google. pating [in the CCC] more or less just want system supports 18.2% of the market. According to Andy Gryc, automotive to know what is going on; that is not “To be MirrorLink compliant you’ve product marketing manager for QNX, 100% support, and it definitely doesn’t got to be part of the consortium, you’ve who was at the Car Connectivity Summit, mean it will find its way into products on got to pay your membership fee and go “People who build phones based on An- a broad scale,” explained Detlef Teichner, through the MirrorLink certification pro- droid were there, so I think MirrorLink vice president of R&D for Continental’s cess,” explained Tom Blackie, vice presi- will eventually get supported. However, infotainment and connectivity division, dent, mobile at Real VNC, a 70-person today there are a lot of challenges which who spoke to us on his last day at Conti- software firm headquartered in Cam- make the [MirrorLink/Android] devices nental. “From the OEMs and RFQs and so bridge, U.K. “That is almost completely run pretty slow.” forth, I see there is an interest, they want the opposite of how Google wants to do continued on page 3 to understand how it might be imple- things. J.D. Power and Associates’ 2011 U.S. Multimedia © 2011 Paul Hansen Associates, 150 Quality and Satisfaction Study Pinehurst Rd., Portsmouth, NH 03801, USA. Telephone: 603-431-5859. Fax: 603- Multimedia Systems Including AM-FM Radio, 431-5791. Email: [email protected]. J.D. Power and Associates’ Single CD Player, Satellite Radio and Navigation All rights reserved. Materials may not be 2011 U.S. Multimedia Quality Problems per 100 Vehicles reproduced in any form without written and Satisfaction Study, released permission. in September, confirmed that Denso/Fujitsu Ten NC* 7.3 The Hansen Report on Automotive Electron- problems with multimedia sys- ics is published at www.hansenreport.com 10.0 tems increase along with the Delphi Corp. 10 times a year, monthly; July/August and system’s complexity. Clarion 10.8 December/January are combined issues. When the system consists of Back issues are available for $50 each. AM/FM, single CD player and Alpine Electronics 11.1 Single and multi-user electronic subscription satellite radio, the industry av- Segment Average 12.1 information and a searchable index are avail- erage was just 4.8 problems per able at www.hansenreport.com. Paul Hansen hundred vehicles. 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