 Hello, I am Takeshi Kanemoto from VNC Automotive and I'm here to talk to you about media aggregation for IVI systems. Here is the agenda for this talk. I'm going to start with a short introduction of the company I work for, VNC Automotive. Then I'm going to show you some current trends in content consumption, how people are consuming media. Next, I'll move on to in-car entertainment of the future, what the automotive passengers of the future would want from in-car entertainment. And then the state of in-car connectivity, where we are today in terms of in-car entertainment. And finally, I'm going to finish the talk with some of the challenges facing the automotive industry in trying to achieve that vision of the future. So, introduction. We are VNC Automotive. We started in 2019 as a division of real VNC. That's the inventor of the VNC protocol. Since 2018, we have been an independent company providing the automotive industry with connectivity software. Our products include device connectivity, remote control software, multimedia framework and telematics software. And I would like to share with you today our insight based on our experience in helping automakers realise in-car entertainment solutions. So, let me show you some trends in content consumption. These are mostly figures that apply to the general public, not limited to the automotive industry. So, it's not surprising that media consumption is on the rise. On the graph on the left, you can see how media consumption has shifted over the last 100 years in the US as an example. As people started to have more leisure time, they spent more time on consuming media content. You can see that Analog TV was starting to dominate in the 70s and 80s only to be replaced by digital media such as digital TV, streaming services and games. On the right, you'll see a trend of where the digital media content is consumed showing the number of hours US adults have spent with digital media. You can see that back in 2008, very few people were consuming digital media on their smartphones and as more personal computers dominated. With the arrival of smartphones and as more mobile-centric web technologies became prevalent, we started to see mobile consumption overtaking PC consumption around 2013. And in 2008, the mobile phone takes up majority of the media consumption space. So, media consumption has been and continues to be increasing and it's increasingly digital and it's increasingly mobile. And it wouldn't be 2020 without talking about COVID-19. With the lockdown and stay at home measures, the upward trend in media consumption is being accelerated as people need to fill the time they would have otherwise spent outdoors on other activities. The infographic on the right taken from the BBC is showing the figures that represent the viewing habits of adults in the UK during the first lockdown. So, let's have a look. Adults spent six and a half hours a day watching TV and online video and that's 45 hours a week. Out of those six and a half hours, they spent over an hour watching streaming services, double what it was before the pandemic. And 12 million customers signed up to news services like Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney+. And viewing figures for video streaming services have gone up by 71% compared to 2019. So, these are some big shifts in people's behaviour and even though they might be temporary, undoubtedly some of them will have a long-term impact on people's lives. Here is another trend. More people are using screens to consume content and more people are using multiple screens to complete a daily task. In fact, 90% of all media interactions are happening on screens. More than 70% of digital users access the internet across multiple devices. And 90% of these users use multiple screens sequentially to accomplish a task. You can imagine a consumer starting their online purchasing on their mobile device, browsing for options perhaps on the train, but switching to their laptop once they get home and finally completing the purchase on their bigger screen that they have on their laptop. Consumers are getting more used to having access to the same content from multiple devices, expecting the content to be responsive to the nature of the device that they're using, choosing which device to access that content based on the experience they want. Another trend is the number of subscription services and how they are becoming increasingly fragmented. More exclusive content is being offered by services. In trying to attract more users. And this is leading to more subscription per user. Consumers often need to sign up to multiple services to watch their favorite shows. Almost all subscription services offer their own application for the best experience. And their other interfaces are often siloed as well. So you end up with different apps on and interfaces on any given device that you have to switch between when consuming content. And can this trend really carry on? I think we are starting to see people getting the so-called subscription fatigue. Some studies suggest that we are already seeing the start of a downward trend in the number of subscriptions per user in some regions. We can predict that there is a great value. There is great value in having services that offer usable aggregation of content from multiple content sources. Just to go back to COVID-19 again. COVID-19 is having an enormous impact on people's mobility. There is a clear shift away from means of transport such as aeroplanes and trains as people prefer private vehicles for intercity travel. A third of customers value having constant access to private vehicles more than before COVID-19. This percentage is higher amongst younger consumers. But how is that impacting media consumption in those private vehicles? Sources suggest that people are still bringing their own devices into cars. The current gen native infotainment systems are not quite there yet in terms of streaming user-generated and social content. Technologies such as CarPlay and UnderAuto are bridging the gap between the user's devices and the IVI systems. But they are overwhelmingly driver-centric. We are seeing some trends in automotive demos that give us an indication as to where the industry is headed. One of the things that we see in the horizon is autonomous driving. Once autonomous driving technology reaches level 3, 4 and 5, we'll start to see the driver having more time for other activities. And to look even further, mobility as a service will see a shift away from the idea of private car ownership and more towards cars being more of a commodity. This will free up time for other activities whilst on the move. And in fact some suggest that this passenger economy will free up more than 250 million hours of commuting time per year in some of the most congested cities in the world. And the rising consumer use of in-vehicle applications and content will add up to a total addressable market value of $200 billion. So that's a huge market to tap into. So with all these trends in mind, what does in-car entertainment look like in the future? Well, here are some examples. So imagine this scenario. You summon an autonomous car with your mobile phone and the vehicle pulls up, recognises your phone, it unlocks the door and welcomes you with a message projected on the window. You climb in and a digital assistant verifies your destination and shows you the route and the time needed to get there and off you go. Once you're moving, the fun begins. The screen rises, the projectors extend the image to the side windows for a 180-degree experience. You can sit in the third row and enjoy interactive media en route to your destination on the available windows. Such example is already being demonstrated by Intel and BMW and there are other similar demos involving virtual reality and augmented reality, for instance. But it's not all just for fun. People can start to use the car as their mobile office with large high-resolution touchscreens with data connections. They can have a better working environment than simply working on their laptops. Even without sophisticated computing units in the car, simply mirroring laptops onto screens inside the car can provide a more comfortable working environment. With more reliable data connections in the car, use cases such as video conferencing will become commonplace. This may seem far in the future, but the basic building blocks of these examples are already here today. But for these examples to be truly accepted by the users and not just some gimmick, there is an important component that technology has to overcome and that is usability. And to achieve that, here are some important technological problems that need to be resolved or need to be solved. First of all, content aggregation. So sharing and aggregating content libraries is key to making the experience usable, flexible playback. That means playing any content from any device and service on any other screen in the car. Seamless media experience, so shifting between screens within and without the car for a better integration with the user's daily lives. So content aggregation. Aggregated and shared content libraries should become the norm. We should be able to see and play music from all registered devices in the car over Wi-Fi rather than the point-to-point link provided by current industry standards like Bluetooth, Android Auto, CarPlay, etc. Users should be able to share pre-downloaded videos with other passengers. And this will be a blessing for parents who will be able to use their smartphone to start a cartoon for a child in the rear seat without having to reach around and try to press buttons on a screen they can't see properly. Consumers should be able to, well, they should expect to be able to start playback from any device or screen on any other device in the vehicle. So that's flexible playback. Playback sources should include things like online streaming platforms, OEM provisioned content, local media like USB storage and optical disks, and devices on the Wi-Fi. Playback should include bring your own devices like smartphones and tablets, rear seat entertainment units, and even the main in-vehicle infotainment console, which are all subject to legal restrictions like viewing in motion. Seamlessly shifting the media experience from one device or screen to another within the car will become commonplace. For example, a consumer should expect to be able to continue playing the same content on their mobile device as they enter the vehicle on the screens inside. So to provide this capability, a flexible software solution is needed so that the service can be varied by manufacturers and based on the vehicle model and the target demographic. And this should be complemented by a content catalog. So that's the future. But let's take a look at what the current state of in-car connectivity. The so-called connected car has evolved over the years. And we saw some interesting ideas in as early as the 1960s, but it wasn't until the infotainment boom around 2007 that we saw connectivity solutions like MirrorLink arrive on the scene. From there, we saw companies like Google and Apple enter the market with Android Auto and CarPlay. We are seeing the ongoing development of V2X and mobility technologies today. In these following pictures, you can really see how the cockpit of a car has evolved over the years with the evolution of the connected car. So let's focus on the connectivity solutions for the cockpit. Smartphone connectivity is an important part of that as mobile devices have their own rich application ecosystems that the automaker can leverage. And the mobile devices often come with data connectivity. In terms of smartphone connectivity standards out there, there are quite a few and you can see some of them here. On the left, you have the more mobile-centric ones like Apple CarPlay, Android Auto and Baidu CarLife. These are driven by web and mobile technology companies. In the middle, you have the more community driven standards like Smart Device Link and MirrorLink. And on the right, you have the more OEM-centric proprietary solutions. The market is fairly fragmented and there's no clear winner. But all of them have a couple of things in common. They are often point-to-point designed for one phone and one display. Not really designed for having multiple devices connected or driving multiple displays using different content from the same phone. Or at least having multiple devices really adds any extra value. And they are also driver-centric. There's more focus on avoiding driver distraction with simplified UI and big buttons and the UI is often limited in what you can access. This means almost all of them are ill-fitted as connectivity standards for media consumption for other passengers. Apart from the projection-based smartphone connectivity, we have some more traditional means of media playback. We have optical disks and USB storage. These are simple but effective. And these days considered somewhat cumbersome because the user has to carry or store physical disks and drives. They would much rather carry the media around on their phones or even stream content from online services. It's much easier. Then you have the good old Bluetooth with protocols like A2DP. You can have a good multi-source experience with that but there's no video capability. And of course TV is quite important in parts of the world, in some parts of the world like Japan. So we've focused on the cockpit until now but what about rear-seat entertainment? Rear-seat entertainment has been around for years but adoption has been slow. It's largely provided by aftermarket equipment suppliers with high price tags. The resolution is often low and functionality is often limited. But cars are getting bigger and the interest in rear-seat entertainment systems is strong across all regions. Demand is mainly from the younger users but so far the lack of high bandwidth data connection inside cars has been one of the major barriers to rear-seat entertainment being more popular. But with the introduction of low-cost unlimited 5G data plans in the near future we can predict that the demand for rear-seat entertainment will go up. There are some other interesting technologies around for in-car entertainment such as personal audio zones. The use of in-car speaker arrays allows each passenger to be able to listen to their own content without interference and this vastly increases the possibilities for in-car and media consumption. The example shown here is from Harman using directional speakers combined with noise cancellation and there are other similar technologies around. And finally, what are some of the challenges facing the automotive industry in trying to achieve in-car entertainment of the future that is truly usable? So one of the key aspects is content provisioning and an important question for the manufacturers is compete or aggregate. How much should they compete with the likes of Netflix, Amazon etc. and provide their own content? Or should they simply aggregate these services to present to the end user? Should they choose to aggregate, they would be responsible for the management of these content sources. They would need to guarantee content delivery to all screens inside the car both built in and brought in. As manufacturers look to offer more content options though they will need to create commercial frameworks with games publishers, Hollywood studios, publishing houses to name only a few. Plus, there are content protection rules and requirement for rights management that are new to most manufacturers. These rules vary for each piece of content, destination device, region and delivery method. Manufacturers will also need to banish content across borders. Within the EU for example, this means complying with the EU content portability rules which allow services to offer the same content catalogue in many countries but moving this content out of the EU may incur geographical restrictions or additional content costs. So managing content provisioning is hard and there are also technological hurdles to consider. One of the main technological hurdles is interoperability when implementing media aggregation. In a car there's a multitude of operating systems, software and hardware platforms, protocols and schemas. The aggregation solution needs to work across all of these combinations and this requires a flexible and modern software stack. So we've had some protocols in the past that partially fulfil these requirements of media aggregation inside vehicles. One such example is DLNA. It's okay but it also has a lot of limitations. It lacks support for modern formats like MKV, etc. Plus, its predefined profiles restrict what can actually be discovered and listed. Some implementations work around this by adding extra on-the-fly transcoding but it's often clunky and inefficient. Most important of all, the protocol including the content protection extensions must involve files and it cannot stream screens like the modern casting technologies can. Technologies such as AirPlay 2, Google Cast, Miracast, VNC, etc. It suffices to say it's not really suited to the era of online video services, media streaming and photo sharing. So there's a real opportunity for a standard for aggregation, a new standard for aggregation, one that works across applications and services on mobile devices, online services and other forms of media. Perhaps one that can agnostically leverage existing casting technologies that are point-to-point with no aggregation but with solid content protection mechanisms already built in. They will be useful for content delivery to the playback devices once the aggregation is done. So this is where I will finish my talk and just to summarize, content consumption is on the rise. It's more digital and more mobile than ever. Passengers of the future will expect usability, not just some gimmick. Content provisioning is hard and media aggregation requires a flexible software stack and there's an opportunity for a new standard in media aggregation. Thank you.