EuroWire July 2016

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Transatlantic cable
July 2016 29
Kevin Walsh, the director of trends and forecasting at GfK, told
London-based Advanced Television that “macro trend increases
in connectivity” are observable across all countries, but with a
notable di erence between emerging and developed market
areas.
For consumers in high-growth, emerging markets the
smartphone is still the main device with which they connect to
data services. But, even as price reductions over the next two
to three years will likely add another billion people to the ranks
of rst-time personal phone users, developed markets are
already seeing the next wave of consumer connectivity.
According to the GfK Connected Consumer Index the growth
drivers in Western Europe and North America are constantly
connected “wearables” (eg Google Glass, whose users check
their screens an average 120 times a day) and connected
cars; with smart home technology “an equally signi cant
opportunity” although one with a slower, steadier consumer
adoption curve.
At the telecom-automotive interface:
a car insurance industry poised for
big gains from the Internet of Things
“IoT-centric usage-based insurance is nally coming of age and it
is turning the traditional car insurance sector upside-down.”
Stockholm-based Marlène Sellebråten, who covers technology
for Industrial IoT 5G, sees Internet of Things (IoT) adoption
in various markets as set to disrupt traditional industries
by introducing new business models. She cites IoT-centred
usage-based insurance (UBI), which uses real-time information
about the driver’s ability and habits via the in-vehicle telematics
system, as a prime example of the trend.
Ms Sellebråten pointed to new research by IHS Automotive
showing that UBI had 12 million subscribers worldwide in 2015.
The Colorado-based provider of automotive news and
intelligence expects that one per cent share of the total car
insurance market to grow to ten per cent by 2023, as insurers
increasingly embrace a smartphone-based model which
surmounts “the hardware barrier.” (“IoT-centric Usage-Based
Insurance Set to Surge,” 11th May)
The adoption of UBI was slowed by cost considerations, legal
concerns, and torpid promotion by insurance companies.
But Stacey Oh of IHS Automotive told Industrial IoT 5G, “In
the European Union, the introduction of eCall [which, as of
April 2018, will summon rapid assistance to motorists involved
in a collision anywhere in the European Union] will be a major
push for UBI.”
Ms Oh, a manager of automotive technology with a speciality
in the Korean market, noted the variety of players now joining
traditional insurance companies in the UBI market, including
OEMs, large data aggregators, and telecoms and telematics
rms: “basically all companies that can process vast amounts of
data.”
The USA is the world’s largest UBI market, with ve million
subscribers in 2015. But Italy leads in market share, with UBI
accounting for ten per cent of its car insurance market.