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Voice of the consumer vital for emerging markets

Automotive World speaks to Visteon’s Amit Jain about the supplier’s approach to bringing connectivity to India

Recent years have seen Visteon focus on vehicle electronics, following a busy period of M&A. Speaking at a conference in November 2015, new Chief Executive Sachin Lawande explained that this had created a “new Visteon”.

Prior to his presentation at Automotive Megatrends India 2015, Automotive World spoke to Amit Jain, Country Head, India and Associate Director South East Asia at Visteon, to understand how the revamped company will address emerging markets such as India.

Amit Jain, Visteon
Amit Jain, Country Head, India and Associate Director South East Asia at Visteon

How is Visteon rolling out its products in emerging markets?

Firstly, we conduct market research and product clinics in all key markets like India to understand the ‘voice of the customer’. By gathering inputs from consumers on their preferences, we identify the value creation zone – the area where the consumer’s willingness to pay exceeds the cost to the OEM. This value zone information enables Visteon to define new products and features which are relevant and desirable in these markets.

Secondly, Visteon also invests heavily in creating platforms for emerging markets from its engineering centres in India. Such platforms offer the modularity and scalability that markets like India require. The platforms are also design protected for phased introduction of new features that Indian OEMs desire.

Thirdly, Visteon collaborates with OEMs to define cross-vehicle product platform strategies for cockpit electronics products. By using common hardware across variants, time to market and costs associated with engineering and development are reduced. For instance, a common board can be designed for different vehicle lines where the mechanical aspects can be designed to provide feature differentiation, thus providing a cost effective solution.

How do you expect the connected car of 2020 to look in developed markets compared to emerging markets?

For developed markets, OEMs and suppliers will continue to invest in the advanced features of already existing infotainment/connectivity solutions such as vehicle to everything (V2X) communication, the Internet of Things (IOT), connected cars and autonomous solutions.

For the emerging markets, we see the emergence of innovative ways of providing a user experience. Firstly, the connected car will evolve with multiple frugal connectivity solutions such as brought-in connectivity (smartphones/USB dongles) and built-in modems in the infotainment head unit.

Multi-device connectivity will evolve as a basic feature, and secondly, apps will be designed to work with varied bandwidths like 2G (in the case of developing semi-urban areas), 3G and 4G while still providing the best possible user experience.

In addition, WiFi connectivity (through phone/home/public Internet) would enable firmware updates over-the-air (OTA), making it convenient for drivers to update vehicle software anywhere, anytime.

Visteon SmartCore
Multi-device connectivity will evolve as a basic feature for emerging markets in coming years

What does the future hold for the ‘new Visteon’ in emerging markets?

This is the most exciting time in the automotive industry as we see the emergence of in-car connectivity in India.

Visteon is working with multiple ecosystem players such as the machine-to-machine (M2M) service providers, mobile device players, web service companies and third-party app developers and content providers. I believe Visteon is well positioned to collaborate with the OEMs in the connected car space.

Freddie Holmes

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