With a market share drop of nearly 50%, has CarPlay been abandoned by smart cars?

"CarPlay is a must when buying a car!" I believe this is the focus of many consumers when buying a car.

The reason for this "stubbornness" is that everyone who has used CarPlay knows that it is too smooth. As a car system released by Apple, it seamlessly combines the user's iOS device, iOS experience and dashboard system. So, if you have an Apple phone and your car supports CarPlay, then the simple car system can play a very important role, which is why CarPlay is so popular.

But the fact is that CarPlay's market share has plummeted in recent years. Data shows that the current installation rate of CarPlay is only about 30%, which is nearly 50% lower than the overall market share in previous years. Why is it that everyone says it is easy to use, but fewer and fewer people are using it?

CarPlay's pros and cons are obvious

As mentioned before, the advantage of CarPlay is that it is smooth and seamless to use. Compared with Baidu CarLife and other products of the same period, it is simply not a product of the same era, but it also has obvious shortcomings.

First of all, the biggest problem is that it only supports Apple phones. What about those users who don't use Apple phones? Can it only be used as a decoration? At present, at least 50% of the domestic phones are Android phones, so this is also an important reason why CarPlay could not be fully rolled out in its heyday.

Secondly, CarPlay is essentially an in-car system, and the large central control screen in the car is equivalent to a display screen. Although CarPlay has been upgraded from wired to wireless, eliminating the problem of wire entanglement in the car, its functions are still limited. It cannot read the underlying data of the vehicle and can only be used for conventional operations such as navigation, listening to music, and making and receiving calls.

For example, you cannot confirm the location of the vehicle through CarPlay, nor can you remotely operate it through CarPlay to obtain the vehicle's endurance, fuel consumption and other underlying data. On the contrary, the vehicle's own car system can connect to the mobile phone to solve the above operations. With the continuous development of intelligent technology, it is obvious that CarPlay cannot really bring enough convenience to consumers.

Of course, another important point is that it is expensive! Some models are not equipped with CarPlay modules, but the car owners want this function. What should they do? In fact, it is also very simple, that is to flash the firmware. If you have an ordinary family car, you go to a modification shop to flash the firmware. Sorry, it will cost you 2,000 yuan. If you have a luxury car, it will cost you 4,000 yuan. Of course, this is based on the premise that you don’t worry about affecting the warranty.

Everyone wants to create their own ecosystem

In fact, every time CarPlay is installed on a car, a portion of the money has to be paid to Apple, which is equivalent to buying the copyright. But everyone knows that who wants to have their money taken away by others for no reason?

So it is not difficult to explain why in recent years a large number of car companies, especially domestic car companies, have been working hard to develop their own car systems, such as Ford's SYNC+, Changan's Wutong Autolink, Geely's GKUI, BYD's DiLink...

Of course, the intelligent performance of these systems is obvious to all. Regardless of whether their fluency can be compared with Apple's iOS, the richness of their functions is completely overwhelming. For example, through the car computer, you can perform voice operations, including turning on the air conditioner, windows, music, navigation, etc., and even "rolling" to the home interconnection, making the vehicle a mobile intelligent platform.

If you are a loyal fan of CarPlay, I still recommend you to experience the intelligent performance of the current mainstream domestic cars, I believe it will refresh your cognition. At the same time, you will also be surprised to find that, for example, Ideal, Weilai, Xiaopeng, BYD, Changan, Geely, etc. basically do not have CarPlay system installed.

In fact, the reason is very simple. In addition to saving costs, more importantly, they generally believe that real smart cars do not need to rely on CarPlay, and most products equipped with CarPlay systems are not smart cars. Of course, you can see the amount of CarPlay installed in joint venture models.

Final Thoughts

Every era has its own products. The heyday of CarPlay was the beginning of the intelligentization of automobiles. As the intelligentization of automobiles has reached a new stage, CarPlay, which stayed in that era, will become a thing of the past. In the future, there will be new products to replace it.