Android in Automotive, the Real Fragmentation

If you listened to the tech blogs (or Apple) in the early years of Android you were told that the platform was doomed because of something called “fragmentation”. To the bloggers, handling different software versions, camera hardware and screen sizes seemed impossible. But Android was built to handle all that and mobile phone manufacturers relied on Google and the platform design to manage and solve the issues.

10 years later the automotive industry is adopting Android as their platform of choice. The industry is facing the same fragmentation bugbear but this time it’s real.

In this talk I describe the state of the automotive industry and its complex relationship with Android when it comes to handling of 3rd party app ecosystems. I outline what I believe will happen next and what actions should and could be taken to change the somewhat bleak picture of the future of automotive for app developers.