Cars are getting more and more connected. In the first quarter of 2016, more cars were added to mobile networks in the American market than smartphones.

More than a third of new connections were in cars, followed by 31% in mobiles. Finally, tablets constituted 23 percent of connections while M2M (machine to machine) was just 14 percent. Connected cars are becoming more and more widespread in the last few years with many users connecting their vehicles to a cell service.

As an example, US telecommunications company, AT&T has eight million cars on its network, probably the highest of any mobile operator in the world, states Chetan Sharma report. AT&T mobile car’s solutions is appealing automobile manufacturers, to the point that they have sealed deals with 9 out of 15 US car companies.

 

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One of the projects to improve cars convenience was started on 2015 by a University of Texas engineering student, Nancy Rodriguez, who was also an intern at AT&T Plano Foundry. After watching some tragic news about children left by accident in hot cars, she decided to build a product that detects living creatures on automobiles and triggers an alarm in certain situations. This prototype has been continued by AT&T and will probably be commercialized in some cars next year.

Despite the advantages of having a connected car (to detect other cars, or to track your way to a destination), many consumers aren’t aware their car is connected. 4 out of 10 don’t realize the cars they owned already had connectivity features on board. On the other hand, the rest said that connected features influenced their decision to buy a certain car.