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A Third Of New Cellular Customers Last Quarter Were Cars (recode.net)
Ina Fried, reporting for Recode: With the U.S. smartphone market saturated, most of the growth in the cellular industry is actually coming from other kinds of devices including tablets, machine-to-machine connections and lots and lots of cars. In the first quarter, for example, the major carriers actually added more connected cars (Editor's note: amounting to a 32 percent capture) as new accounts than they did phones.
My car automatically connects to my phone via Bluetooth every time I get in. I can listen to mp3 music over the car stereo, talk to someone via hands free, or even listen to pandora over the phone's LTE connection (though I have enough mp3s that I don't have to). I can even use the phone's GPS to tell me where I am and give me instructions through the car stereo on where I need to go. I don't need an extra monthly bill so that the car has its own connection. But capitalists love connected cars because the auto manufacturers can advertise the next generation "connected automobile" and the wireless companies get another monthly revenue stream. They're also hopeful on marketing this to parents so that they can have an internet connection available for their kids to watch Netflix or play games on long family trips instead of actually having to ***gasp*** socialize and interact with them.