PACIFIC BASIN ECONOMIC COUNCIL
MAIN PAGE | EVENTS & PROGRAMS | 2001 | IGM | SPEECHES | THOMAS O'GARA

Additional Info: Policy Statements Speeches Photos Speakers & Noted Participants Featured Biographies Registration Media Information Conference Statement Regional Vitality in the 21st Century April 6-10, 2001 — Tokyo, Japan Mr. Thomas O'Gara Founder MobileAria Thank you very much. Thank you for this opportunity. I'm going to talk a little bit about a topic that has to do with wireless but it's related directly to telematics. I've been in the telematics business I guess for a long time. We've had the opportunity as an automobile manufacturer to make all the armored cars for the American Presidents since Mr. Roosevelt. As a consequence, in 1984, we provided work with Motorola and other companies in providing connectivity to the American President's car and that's where all this began. I am the founder of a company called MobileAria. We are located in Silicon Valley, we have survived the downturn and crash of our market, we are now slowing trying to work our way through rolling black outs in the valley. I think Chairman of the Singapore delegation, Mr. Y.Y. Wong, said it best today about us in Silicon Valley. We are convalescing from an overdose of hubris and so with a great deal of humility, I show you our partners Delphi Automotive and Palm Computing, who are involved with us in our telematic venture. MobileAria is a service provider of voice enabled applications and it is in the forefront North America of this information revolution that is occurring. And so with that, I'd like to discuss how this information access to any information any time anywhere is coming about. I think that my colleagues up here have hit a lot of these topics and I'll briefly show you a few of those devices that you're all familiar with: from the DoCoMo's phone to on the left Delphi's mobile productivity center to the palm that you've seen before to the Key Sierra smartphone that we now have in the United States to General Motor's infotainment PC that's there. I think that C.D. did an excellent job also of bringing up the buzz-words and he talked about the implications of these larger pipes as we move from 2G to 3G in the United States where we're much further behind than the outstanding cellular service that you have here. But bluetooth enabling voice recognition, these are the holy grail of what's being developed in the telematics industry that's going to lead us to this mobile multi media capability. As I said, I selected this topic of telematics because the wireless story is a long and inconverluded one but telematics very simply is this convergence of voice and data enabled by global positioning technology that allows us to provide these location based services - security, information, enhanced productivity and entertainment services and we'll talk more about that in a second. The wireless pipes have been discussed many times and I won't take you through anymore on the meaning of that. Access to this information will be displayed in the car and this is a picture of an infotainment center that will be seen that is now available here in Japan, 24 percent of the market already has telematics. In the U.S. it's nothing like that. But with this telematics and what's happening to the driver is some public policy issues that I wanted to get at today which is driver distraction. Driver distraction comes about through these multitasking efforts in terms of driving, keeping your hands on the wheels and eyes on the road. As we move information anytime anywhere into the vehicle, we have to mitigate for driver safety and some of the things that are being developed in the automobile industry - from infra-red that's available now on the Cadillac to stop the pile ups that are occurring on the freeways in California, in other places to adaptive and smart cruise control which sees the vehicle in front of us as we're involved in talking to our children or talking on the telephone allows those vehicles to be controlled automatically and lastly the development of forewarned the radar systems as you attempt to pull out in front of the speeding car as you're engaged with some of this information will prohibit you from entering into an automobile accident. These types of devices are as important in the car as is the cellular services in the voice enabled applications that will come about. The architecture that brings these to the car again has been well discussed here today and I'd take this opportunity today just to move forward to it. And from that, I think this is kind of an interesting highlight although I focus here on the North American end of it. What's the money associated with this? The money is staggering just in this telematics industry, voice and data and the auto for just the services portion is going to be $33 billion by the end of the decade which is interesting in that right now it is less than $300 million and that does not include the hardware associated with these telematics services that four companies like Motorola, XXStar, Delphi, and will approach the $60 billion range. North America and North Americans spend 26 billion hours inside their cars annually. While they're sitting in those cars, 80 percent up to 80 percent of the cell phone calls that are made come from those drivers who are trapped in those vehicles. So you can see why it's such a lucrative market. Part of the presentation was to talk about how PDAs also impact that. We have an interesting study here - PDA owners, palms for example, 36 percent of the people who own palms in North America acknowledged that they have the cell phone on one hand, they have the steering wheel on the other hand and then on their lap they have the palm that they're pushing so they use their legs to steer their cars that are going down the road. The public policy implications of something like this are staggering. 73 percent of the owners want to have a better system in the car that has voice recognition in it. Going back to the public policy issues, it is believed that between 10 and 20 percent of all the automotive accidents that occurred, occur with people who are involved in a cellular conversation. When you look at the size of that, again that's a $350 billion loss that occurs in the country just in North America alone. You can see why the regulators are looking very closely at what's going on inside these vehicles. Telematics, the telematics segments is an area that I wanted to highlight. This shows the area, safety and security is the biggest selling feature in North America. Here in Asia, navigation is the biggest issue. In the U.S. for us North Americans, safety and security provides us with peace of mind. We know that in the event of an automobile accident, through this convergence of data and global positioning technology, 911 will be called and the ambulance will be dispatched to the precise location of the automobile accident and this golden hour from the time that someone is hurt if they can be brought to a hospital the chance for recovery is really outstanding. But with this peace of mind, we give up something else that we all value very much. As we heard earlier, in Japan the development of privacy laws, it is that loss of privacy that people would know where we are. The whole GPS technology ensures that there are only a few suppliers of there that anywhere we go people will know where we are. Location based services that come out of this will not only allow us to get access to goods as we drive by them, an example also in that area is insurance. Insurance will be available by the mile and by the location you drive in. So once again people who live in Beverly Hills California and drive there, insurance is going to be a very cheap commodity. For those we aren't as fortunate to live in an area like that though, insurance again will become very expensive and again the public policy issue of this digital divide that PBEC is trying to address by the year 2010 will be further enhanced is the difference between the haves and the have nots continue to grow further on it. I think that productivity, the ability to utilize our time more efficiency, for us in Silicon Valley, our time and productivity drives us constantly. But at the cost of in the cars, the lack of spontaneity with the amount of time that goes on, it becomes very difficult for us to have meaningful relationships with our family and at the same time push the businesses to go on. So in conclusion, what I would like to say is that there is tremendous global opportunities not just in the wireless sector but obviously in the telematics sector. The mobile information platform is headed for every one of the vehicles, bluetooth, voice recognition, all those things that you hear about will be the technologies that implement these things. It will bring us with these policy issues of the digital divide and again the loss of privacy that goes on. In the end, it is going to come down to this responsible use of technology where the individual controls what's going on and making sure that technology is leveraged up and not the individual.