With automotive growth in China soaring, both foreign and local OEMs are scrambling to get in on the action. Strategy Analytics Automotive Multimedia and Communications Service predicts that telematics and connectivity ECU’s will grow more than thirteen-fold by 2016.

Especially given the congestion issues in China’s tier one cities, navigation and traffic information is going to be a key connected service. We recently conducted a survey of current Chinese navigation consumers to examine their usage of navigation devices, their usage of navigation features, their satisfaction with those features, and their interest and willingness to pay for features on their next navigation device.

The main findings were:

- Chinese consumers that own embedded navigation systems use them more often on a daily basis than owners of PNDs and owners of navigation applications on mobile devices. 

- While route guidance to a new destination is used more often on a weekly basis, speed camera warnings and real-time traffic are used more often on a daily basis.

- Real-time traffic and speed camera warnings are also the two features in which Chinese consumers must have on their next navigation device.

Given the state of the traffic situation in China, the relevance of real-time traffic is not at all surprising. Of course, while Chinese consumers are very interested, and may even be willing to pay for it, traffic services need to be extremely accurate. It only takes a one missed event for a consumer to lose trust in their traffic system. And as we’ve experienced, a missed event can cost a driver several hours.

The full report is available to ACI clients here.