At the moment Car manufacturers globally are working to standardize the operating system (OS) based on Linux for In-Vehicle Infotainment systems (IVI) which will allow the car to act more like a smartphone. The Tizen SDK allows developers to Target Tizen IVI for HTML5 applications.
“Currently, car manufacturers often have difficulty making their consumers to buy informatics systems because these systems can only do 10% of what can be done by smartphones,” said Rudi Streif, who leads the Automotive Grade Linux workgroup to the Linux Foundation.
Car manufacturers currently use proprietary software developed by third party suppliers to run their infotainment system, which means the application themselves for the car must also be proprietary in nature.
In 2012, the Linux Foundation’s Tizen project unveiled, architecture and software development kit (SDK) which is a reference to a Linux-based IVI. Tizen SDK allows developers to use HTML5 in writing applications for IVI.
Reactor is a software services and consulting company that has its headquarters in Helsinki, Finland, that makes Tizen IVI User Interfaces:
“One does not have to re-create mobile applications for the infotainment system every time a new application is made. We want to be able to use existing applications on smartphones and access them through the user interface,” said Konsta Hansson, general manager at Reactor.
As these standards are adopted throughout the IVI industry we will expect to see existing mobile applications to make the transition over to the IVI world.
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