How do you see the automotive technology evolving into connected cars?
Over the last few years, automotive electronics and wireless technologies have grown leaps and bounds. Advancement in these technologies, combined with device convergence and changing lifestyle demands, are enabling the automobile industry to extend the driving experience beyond traditional vehicle transport. The connected car promises improved quality of life for the consumers and society at large, thus opening a wide area of business opportunity for various stakeholders, such as vehicle users, auto OEMs and service providers.
A big buzzword nowadays in the automotive industry is “connected car” and this is the next big revolution in this industry. Connected cars have devices that connect to other devices within the car/vehicles. For example, internet access can provide information that warns of traffic congestion, collisions and other safety alerts. Typically, a connected car has a head-unit, infotainment unit, in-dash system with a screen from where the
operation can be seen and managed by the driver.
Do you think proliferation of vehicle connectivity would impact telematics in the connected cars scenario?
Market research forecasts that the market size for connected vehicles will reach $46.69 billion by 2020. According to Gartner, there will be a quarter billion connected vehicles on the road, enabling new in-vehicle services and automated driving capabilities. Gartner adds that during the next five years, the proportion of new vehicles equipped with this capability will increase dramatically, making connected cars a major element of the Internet of Things (IoT).
The increased consumption and creation of digital content within the vehicle will drive the need for more sophisticated infotainment systems, creating opportunities for application processors, graphics accelerators, displays and human-machine interface technologies.
At the same time, new concepts of mobility and vehicle usage will lead to new business models and expansion of alternatives to car ownership, especially in urban environments. Gartner forecasts that about one in five vehicles on the road worldwide will have some form of wireless network connection by 2020, amounting to more than 250 million connected vehicles.

How would you describe the advantages of connected cars in an IoT environment?
The connected car, which is now an integral part of IoT, is a confluence of smartphone integration, cloud connectivity, infrastructure connectivity, and vehicle-to-vehicle connectivity, supported by a range of comfort, convenience, entertainment, vehicle ownership, and safety-related services. The advantages of connected vehicles are impressive and numerous. Here are some of the awesome benefits of connected vehicles.
Prevention of crashes: Connected vehicles will communicate with similar equipped vehicles on the road within a range of 300 meters and alert the driver about the proximity of other vehicles, thus giving the driver a better idea of the vehicles around his/her car.
Weather-related information: Certain weather conditions (like black ice), which do not appear hazardous, but may prove dangerous later on, will be recorded and transmitted from one vehicle to another. This will help users to better plan their
entire trip.

What are the opportunities that you see in the Indian market?
Telecom, energy and automotive telematics are our key areas. Along with the growth of automotive telematics in India, LTE is going to the next big thing that would drive this industry going forward. With operators rolling out 4G networks, 4G LTE is going to be the game changer in the market.
In India, Telit plans to continue expanding the value it brings to the various vertical segments with new products and services in the machine-to-machine communication space and the IoT. The company is already collaborating with OEM/Design partners and collectively participate in implementation of government initiated M2M/IoT based projects.
Apart from that, the company aims to increase penetration in the small-to-medium enterprise customer base securing growing number of new IoT applications.