Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Chris Ruff, CEO of UIEvolution (Part 5)

SM: How does the car industry see this evolution happening?

CR: Well, today there’re a couple approaches. One is that the mobile phone application would work similar to the way that you’re controlling the address book and things like that on your phone. The app’s residing there, you’re just using the controls and speakers in the car to make it communicate better. That’s one way. The other way that we’re seeing most people do is that they’re building companion applications for the cars. Then you can begin to work with the head unit manufacturers to integrate more of the deep controls into it. Frankly, the way the Bluetooth connectivity works today is a pretty simple use case. It’s [centered on] telephony and address books for the most part. But when you start talking about Yelp, there’s going to be an experience in the car. There’s going to be an experience in the phone. And to some extent, you have to bridge the gap between there, and there is a small application on both sides of that, one in the car and one in the cell phone … to make it work well.

SM: Who is going to be handling that? Would the car companies be handling that or the app companies?

CR: Both.

SM: Are the apps companies going to have to come up with driving apps?

CR: Yes. There’re a couple of different schools of thought on this that are going around. If you want to talk about total industry innovation, I think it’s going to be controlled both by the auto manufacturers and the independent application developers because it’s too big of a problem to have either side control it. We’re not anywhere close to a day when the auto manufacturers are going to be ready to open up the internal systems of their cars to app developers. So, there’s always going to be trusted relationships going on there that need to be managed, especially if you want to do more complicated things. But the app developers are going to take whatever access they’re given and like great application developers, they’re going to push the envelope like crazy to eke out performance and capability and usefulness for the end user. And that’s going to motivate the auto manufacturers to keep moving faster in opening up. It’s going to be symbiotic just like in the mobile apps space, you know, the transition from carriers to smart phones, it was symbiotic how it was handled four or five years ago.

SM: Are there any examples of early apps that are good driving apps?

CR: Not on the open market today.

SM: So, this is a nascent situation right now.

CR: It’s a really nascent situation. The problem is there’re too many apps that require the user to touch the app to make things work. There’re a few where people can throw the phones on the seats next to them and the app will have the accelerometer to control stuff like speed and things like that that are kind of interesting, but I haven’t seen a lot of independent applications. The stuff that the car manufacturers are doing are all early stage and evolving quickly and best practices are coming out of that today. It’s very early market. And that’s what’s fun about it. It’s fun because I don’t think anyone knows for sure where it’s going to end up. But we have a whole bunch of history with mobile phones and other industries on how we can begin to build technical products and business plans to make it work.

SM: Very interesting. And you see yourself playing in this driving app business, since you said you have a big presence in the car industry?

CR: Yes. We’re fully committed to using our software platforms both in the car and the mobile phone spaces to improve the auto driving experience. We’re fully committed to that. We’re going to play a role in that, and we’re going to use – because we’ve been around for 12 years and have these sizable relationships with hardware manufacturers and auto manufacturers, we’re going to use those relationships and our longevity to work more on the inside, I would say, as insiders than being out in the app store market just innovating on our own. That’ll be our strategy.

SM: Great. I’m curious and actually look forward to following what happens in that space.

CR: Yes, it’s going to be a lot of fun over the next three or four years.

SM: This is not a simple problem at all.

CR: No, no, no. I’d be the first to admit that this is not a simple problem, which is what makes it fun to innovate. One of the challenges with generic media smart phone applications space is that there’s a lot of competition and brands matter, and sometimes they don’t, but there’re – what? — hundreds of sports applications and hundreds of ways to look at YouTube videos. There’s just so much media and content that it’s hard to differentiate in a way that adds value. But when you tackle big markets with big technology challenges, that’s what makes it fun.

SM: Right. Very interesting, Chris. Thank you for talking with me.

CR: Thank you for your time.

This segment is part 5 in the series : Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Chris Ruff, CEO of UIEvolution
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