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Mobile professionals spend many hours each day driving between appointments as an essential part of their work. Others spend significant amounts of time commuting to and from their place of work. If these drivers can responsibly make productive use of their time behind the wheel, they will have strong motivation to do more than just drive while in their car. Some key statistics for the US: 60-80% of cellular phone calls originate or continue inside the vehicle I At least 43% of PDA owners say they have used their PDA while driving II Over 17% of laptop users report using their laptop in their car III On average, 500,000 drivers are using a cell-phone at any point in time IV Between 4,000 and 8,000 traffic accidents occur daily due to some form of driver distraction V Clearly a large number of drivers are already using personal productivity devices such as phones, PDAs, pagers and computers to make themselves more productive in the car.

Entertainment is the “killer application” for high value telematics services in vehicles. Entertainment does not require a new, untested consumer business model: consumers have been “paying” for entertainment in vehicles for decades. Examples include purchases of audio cassettes and CDs; listening to radio advertising; and more recently, the rental or purchase and playback of videotape movies in the rear seat. Today, technology advances in digital satellite broadcasting, digital compression, mass data storage, and broadband wireless communications are driving very dynamic business opportunities for entertainment service delivery to vehicles. Obvious examples are XM and Sirius Radio, DVD movies, rear seat video games, and MP3 audio playback from flash memory or hard disc drives. A more advanced example is the direct sale and download of compressed digital audio, video, and game software via wireless links that bypass the conventional bricks and mortar retail business.