Invisible handholding

TECHNOLOGY: Blaupunkt is set to launch a database-driven mobile navigation system in India, but is the coast clear?

Imagine a co-passenger in your car with an aerial view of where you are and where you want to go "" and with an itch for backseat driving that's dealt with by an easy flick of a button.

Blaupunkt GmbH, the ¤300 million mobile communications and car entertainment company, wants you to let a little handheld gizmo play precisely that role: that of a route navigator.

The company, famous for car audio systems, is set to launch a comprehensive mobile navigation system in the Indian market by early 2007 "" by which it expects to double its Indian revenues to $20 million in five years.

"We are working on a host of products using new technologies like Bluetooth," says Jurgen Welk, vice-president, marketing, Blaupunkt, "to be launched in the Indian market over the next one year. Major among them is a mobile navigation system for cars, for which development of content is underway."

Content, of course, is very nearly everything in this business "" for it involves intense detailing of a city's streets, updated information on which is never easy to obtain in India ("Make your own road" wasn't a popular ad slogan in India for nothing).

Undaunted, Blaupunkt is currently working with an Indian company for map development of the country's major cities. Once ready, the software system is expected to have enough data to offer "" via a handheld device "" reliable route guidance based on actual traffic density patterns, apart from distance calculations and the like.

"The service will be offered through an aftermarket sales network," says Welk, "It will be introduced as an original equipment product installed in cars in the second phase."

The brand already has OEM deals for its music systems with GM, Tata Motors, Reva, Hyundai, Ford and Mahindra & Mahindra, and hopes to interest them in its new service as well.

Much could depend on the reliability-for-money equation. As a concept, the need for such a service is obvious, at least to harried drivers who get caught in gridlocked traffic all too often; the reason that FM radio stations in India don't do what their US counterparts do (relay traffic reports from helicopters) is the stringency of domestic regulations. Anything that seems even vaguely "strategic" is frowned upon by the authorities. Remember Google Earth?

But this is innocuous. So feels Ajay Sahney, deputy general manager, car multimedia, Blaupunkt. "As of now," he says, "we don't see any need for government approval to introduce a mobile navigation system in the Indian market." After all, it's just the equivalent of a friend offering directions on the phone.

Also, for Blaupunkt, this is a logical extension "" since it is a leading car-gizmo brand already. Operating globally, it sells over 5 million car radios and 5,00,000 navigation systems every year.

In India, the brand is marketed by Mico (under licence), and it sells through 650 dealers across the country "" dealers who'd now be interested not just in what's going through your ears, but which way you're steering.