EuroWire July 2016

Transatlantic cable

Kevin Walsh, the director of trends and forecasting at GfK , told London-based Advanced Television that “macro trend increases in connectivity” are observable across all countries, but with a notable di erence between emerging and developed market areas. For consumers in high-growth, emerging markets the smartphone is still the main device with which they connect to data services. But, even as price reductions over the next two to three years will likely add another billion people to the ranks of rst-time personal phone users, developed markets are already seeing the next wave of consumer connectivity. According to the GfK Connected Consumer Index the growth drivers in Western Europe and North America are constantly connected “wearables” (eg Google Glass, whose users check their screens an average 120 times a day) and connected cars; with smart home technology “an equally signi cant opportunity” although one with a slower, steadier consumer adoption curve.

by introducing new business models. She cites IoT-centred usage-based insurance (UBI), which uses real-time information about the driver’s ability and habits via the in-vehicle telematics system, as a prime example of the trend. Ms Sellebråten pointed to new research by IHS Automotive showing that UBI had 12 million subscribers worldwide in 2015. The Colorado-based provider of automotive news and intelligence expects that one per cent share of the total car insurance market to grow to ten per cent by 2023, as insurers increasingly embrace a smartphone-based model which surmounts “the hardware barrier.” (“IoT-centric Usage-Based Insurance Set to Surge,” 11 th May) The adoption of UBI was slowed by cost considerations, legal concerns, and torpid promotion by insurance companies. But Stacey Oh of IHS Automotive told Industrial IoT 5G , “In the European Union, the introduction of eCall [which, as of April 2018, will summon rapid assistance to motorists involved in a collision anywhere in the European Union] will be a major push for UBI.” Ms Oh, a manager of automotive technology with a speciality in the Korean market, noted the variety of players now joining traditional insurance companies in the UBI market, including OEMs, large data aggregators, and telecoms and telematics rms: “basically all companies that can process vast amounts of data.” The USA is the world’s largest UBI market, with ve million subscribers in 2015. But Italy leads in market share, with UBI accounting for ten per cent of its car insurance market.

At the telecom-automotive interface: a car insurance industry poised for big gains from the Internet of Things

“IoT-centric usage-based insurance is nally coming of age and it is turning the traditional car insurance sector upside-down.” Stockholm-based Marlène Sellebråten, who covers technology for Industrial IoT 5G , sees Internet of Things (IoT) adoption in various markets as set to disrupt traditional industries

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July 2016