A new research report from Berg Insight reckons that 4.3 million cars in Europe will have an on-board telematics device at the end of 2010. The main application for these mobile devices is stolen vehicle tracking, followed by automatic emergency calls, driver assistance and insurance use.
In Europe, the EU’s eCall project is making progress, although France and the UK haven’t yet signed up.
Johan Fagerberg, Senior Analyst at Berg Insight, said “The penetration rate is still below 2% of the total car parc, so there is a huge untapped potential. Some vital technical standards are now in place and the EC has presented a realistic deadline for full-scale implementation by 2014.”
Berg Insight anticipates the safety system generating 15 million new telematics-enabled cars per year once it’s implemented, dramatically increasing the total number of active subscribers to 28.7 million in 2015.