I have known Javier García and Brice Crabbe for more than 20 years. The first was the head of product for Nokia, when the Finnish dominated the mobile market in the world, and in Spain, with shares that far exceeded 40 percent. Brice was the one who managed the sales of a brand that before 2007 died of success in any country with its terminals and its Symbian operating system.
Since those years, both Javier and Brice had also to search and scan the market to find new businesses in which to help Nokia expand. And both already recognized how by 2009 the automotive sector was in the doldrums, and something very similar to what happened in the telecommunications sector a couple of years earlier happened. In Telecos there was a software and hardware disruption that turned the sector around. The hardware one was the arrival of the iPhone in 2007, which completely broke Nokia. And then there was a software disruption in 2008, which was the arrival of Android. An open operating system, based on Linux, usable by any manufacturer, and that dynamited the dominance of Symbian to give Nokia the finishing touch.
“The automotive sector was also dying in 2009, but there are two relevant disruptions. One in the hardware area, which is the arrival of Tesla, a manufacturer that starts from scratch at the beginning of the 21st century. And that also builds an electric, sports car with a very beautiful design. And besides all this, one hundred percent connected. It was almost a smartphone on wheels. And in 2009-2010 there is also a software disruption that was the arrival of Uber, which completely changes the way people move in cities. And it causes a disruption in a very traditional sector like the taxi. Uber was born with a quality business model to offer the customer a mobility service using the smartphone with geolocation as a key part of it, ”says Javier García.
And that’s when the two former Nokia executives wonder why a company like Google is investing billions of dollars in the autonomous car, artificial intelligence and machine learning. And in buying Waze, one of the startups that stood out in the smartphone navigation sector. It also meant one more disruption, added to the previous ones, in the automotive sector.
These events, and the Nokia debacle, are the germ of CarMedia, Javier García and Brice Crabbe’s commitment to turn the connected and autonomous car on the fifth screen. In it they confess that they have invested all their savings after leaving Microsoft in 2016, which bought what was left of Nokia in September 2013 for more than 5,400 million euros. “We still remember when in 2002-2003 Nokia launched the concept of the fourth screen. We said then how the mobile with keys was going to be in a few years all screen, and it would become the fourth screen (after PC, TV and cinema) to view video content and images “
After eight months in the absolute mud in 2016, as Javier and Brice relate, they developed the CarMedia platform and in November of that same year they had the first product prototype or Minnimum Viable Product (MVP). And they reach an agreement with Cabify in Madrid to make a small pilot with five cars, in which they mount the fifth screen. “We think”, says Brice, “that in a VTC the user is a passenger, and that it will be the closest thing to what the autonomous and connected car will be in a few years. We did not know if the user was going to use this fifth screen, basically because he also has a smartphone in his pocket where he can consume content. And that is why we take maximum care of the user experience, so that it is really and specifically designed for this environment ”, says Brice.
At the Mobile World Congress in 2017, after an alliance with Cabify to install its fifth screen to its entire fleet of cars in Barcelona, CarMedia is presented in partnership. What better than the most important technological showcase at an international level. But they still have a long way to go. They continue to develop, with their money, their own entertainment platform, in which ecommerce they recognize will play a fundamental role, as long as it is not intrusive for the user. There is no other reason than this for Google to get into this business. “If 90 percent of their income on the PC and on the smartphone is advertising, in the connected and autonomous car, on the fifth screen, they also expect to get the same. We are convinced that Google wants to lead this market too, and the service will be given away ”.
Javier and Brice recognize the current moment as crucial, both for the automotive and technology sectors. The former do not want what happens to Nokia, and that is why most of them have brought technology companies such as Apple, Google or Amazon into their homes, without knowing very well what will happen in the future. One might even think that they have brought the enemy at home, since their sector will change in the next ten years more than it has evolved in the last hundred. And CarMedia wants to be in the same territory, to bring entertainment and ecommerce to the connected, driverless car. “We are looking for an industrial partner, in Spain, France; Germany,…, to incorporate more algorithms and artificial intelligence to our project, and that we can adjust the content to the demands that customers are going to have inside the vehicle ”, says Javier García.
And why not an alliance with a telecommunications operator to offer the taxi community a complete offer in which in addition to its mobile line there is also a content package adapted to its users and that taxi drivers can compete, for example, with the VTC? At the moment CarMedia has already adapted its platform to Telefónica’s 5G connected cities project in Talavera and Segovia, in which autonomous cars will circulate in the next three years with Movistar + content adapted to the circumstances and times of the journeys, which in Europe vary on average between 15 and 20 minutes. But this is only the beginning, and Javier and Brice, with their project, also want to go their way. And they carry the lesson learned at Nokia, to compete in the connected and autonomous future of driving.
