Tech talk Digest

Wouldn’t it be nice to connect your smartphone to your car and continue to access the apps on your phone via voice as you drive? Quite frankly, the possibilities are endless if such a system exists to support this connection seamlessly. With the introduction of Ford’s SYNC AppLink technology, we seem to have moved one step closer to this reality.

Ford’s SYNC system is a factory-installed, fully integrated in-vehicle communications and entertainment system that allows users to make hands-free telephone calls and control music and other functions using voice commands. The system consists of applications and user interfaces developed by Ford and third-party developers that run on the Microsoft Windows Embedded Automotive operating system.

AppLink extends the current abilities of SYNC by allowing users to control third-party apps on their mobile device using SYNC’s voice recognition capability. With Ford’s SYNC AppLink installed in a car, a driver can control specific third-party applications on his smartphone by speaking to the automobile. AppLink doesn’t just offer simple, basic control of the smartphone apps. For example, users of Pandora – a web and mobile music streaming and discovery engine - can access their favorite personalized radio features, including creating and choosing stations, bookmarking songs for purchase, and giving songs a thumbs up/down all through voice.

AppLink will initially support three smartphone apps on Apple’s iOS, Google’s Android and Research in Motion’s BlackBerry platforms, with additional applications expected to be compatible with SYNC AppLink in the future.

In Jan 2011, Ford announced that their SYNC AppLink technology will be available for their Ford Mustang 2012 models. This is in addition to a previous announcement back in Dec 2010 on the availability of the SYNC AppLink for the Ford Fiesta 2011 model.

In April last year, Ford also detailed plans for the release of the AppLink APIs. To developers, this means that they can leverage on the existing SYNC system to create applications that are suitable for use on an automobile. This also creates a differentiating factor for their apps. For example, drivers that can easily link Pandora to their vehicle and control it through the SYNC voice system might be more inclined to choose Pandora over Rhapsody or some other media streaming application.

In my opinion, this offers a unique niche opportunity: More than 2 million Ford vehicles have the current SYNC system and while only the 2011 Fiesta and the 2012 Mustang currently support AppLink, Ford is sure to be keen to add to the list of models that can work with smartphones in the future and increase the number of cars on the road that can support SYNC AppLink.