Upcoming models of Volvo in China will be using Huawei's in-car application platform. The two companies signed a cooperation contract at the Shanghai auto show 2019.
Mobile world Congress. PHOTO: Huawei official website
On April 18, at the Auto Shanghai 2019, Huawei and premium carmaker Volvo reached a strategic cooperation and signed a partnership contract. This cooperation focuses on building an open service platform and ecosystem for the automotive industry. The in-car application service platform that is tailor-made for Chinese consumers, covers features such as parking, refueling, and entertainment, according to auto.qq.
Huawei also allowed the automaker to embed the “Huawei App Store”, inside its next-generation intelligent in-car interactive system. As mentioned above the collaboration is only available to Mainland China.
Jan-Erik Larsson, vice president of R&D for Volvo Cars Asia Pacific, said the application with Huawei's App Store will be used on all Volvo models of the next generation.
Android has a huge market share in the smartphone field. Under such a trend, Volvo chooses to cooperate with Huawei to value Huawei’s excellent competitive position in mobile phones, communication, 5G, and intelligent interaction, reported the company itself. In the future, Huawei will also conduct in-depth cooperation with Volvo around smart travel.
Xu Zhijun, the chairman of Huawei's rotating company, announced that Huawei is committed to becoming an incremental component supplier for intelligent networked vehicles, focusing on ICT technology to help car companies build good cars.
According to current trends, the future automotive consumption business will not only be limited to product competition but also the competition of lifestyle and ecological experience, which is all about intelligent hardware, AI and Internet services. The full scene smart experience will become a trend in the near future.
Through cooperation with Volvo Cars, in the future, Huawei's full-service coverage will be extended to the car. Through Huawei's smart car cloud platform, all kinds of information and services can be gathered to achieve unified decision-making and accurate service recommendation. At the same time, Huawei's smart assistant core will also be able to achieve home air conditioning, lighting off, and office work in the car.
Huawei is not the first company Volvo has cooperated with. Other companies include: AMap which is based on the high-tech customization and adaptation development of Volvo Car's infotainment platform for high-tech version of map; Iflytek, provides a complete set of in-vehicle system speech recognition products used for interior temperature, telephone, media, etc.; cooperation with Alibaba is to connect the smart ecology of Tmall Elf into the car, Volvo car users can talk to the Tmall Elf at home, check the vehicle status without leaving the house, sit in the car and enjoy the full-services of Tmall Elf, such as infotainment, online shopping, and control electronics at home from the car.
It is a good thing for the customers in China, since the car application is more in line with the local people’s habits.
Apart from Chinese companies, in 2017, the carmaker had announced a close partnership with Google to develop the next generation of its award-winning in-car infotainment and connectivity solution based on Android, offering access to a wide array of apps and services. The cooperation was cemented in May 2018, when both parties said they would work together to embed the voice-controlled Google Assistant, Google Play Store, Google Maps and other Google services into Volvo's next-generation Sensus infotainment system, based on Google's Android operating system.