IAA Show

Last week I was in Frankfurt for the IAA show. I was really impressed. Imagine a show the size of CES filled with nothing but cars and car accessories. Now imagine it is six times the size of CES. It was amazing. I read in the newspaper that there were over a million visitors to the show. WOW!

I was there to meet with a few of our partners and to collect some information on trends in the automotive industry. One thing that was clear is that the number of gadgets in the car are proliferating. The other thing is that there is no standard way (elegant or not) to connect them all in the car. There was everything from simple cables to black boxes to aftermarket headunits to OEM systems to nav systems with built in wireless. I'm not sure there was one single trend that emerged as a clear winner, but it sure was great to see more options starting to emerge other than the FM transmitter. I'd say 80% of the cars there had some sort of connection built in. most of them were standard aux-in cables, but that is still better than the world we live in now. Some of the cool interoperability with in-dash electronics was impressive. One of the cooler implementations was Blue and Me from Fiat (yes, Fiat). It was a simple integrated entertainment system, but was easy to use via a display embedded in the speedometer and connected to external devices such as a nav unit. It was very slick - especially for an entry-level car. The next year or so should prove very interesting if the manufacturers standardize on an implementation.