The ‘platform’ became the hot trend of last two years. Most of the web services I used became some kind of a platform; some had great traction such as Facebook and iPhone while some others never gave me the leap in functionality to go the extra mile, such as Netvibes and iGoogle. Although one may claim that platforms and applications are at their peak, that may not be necessarily so. iPhone applications reach about 12 million users today, and that number is somewhere around 40 million for Facebook. I am almost sure that those numbers will not go beyond the number of cars on the roads today, which tallies around 600 million globally and 250 million in the U.S alone. As one of the biggest defenders of proprietary technology in the world, could automakers be bold enough to open their doors for application developers? It certainly seems so, as pointed out by a BMW executive during a panel in Detroit.

I am totally delighted with the idea, as the simple displays in the cars I used before, which was inflated by car manufacturers with terms like ‘Drive Computer’, have lots of potential to do more but in fact accomplish only a little in practice. If a group of automakers decide to collaborate together, it would provide a critical mass for application developers to come up with new functionalities that we never experienced before. It would even make my stretch Crowdsourcing for Traffic idea possible.

Coming to pros and cons, the system could turn into an extra revenue stream for car makers, where they would provide drivers the opportunity to buy new functionalities and navigation maps on the go. Moreover, it would be a significant boost for owners’ convenience, as the manufacturers would update the firmware of various car functions on the air, without a need to visit the service shop. On the flipside, unauthorized access of appllications to mission critical electronic functions such as braking and airbag control has the potential to be simply lethal. The consequences could be far more disastrous than the ones caused by security holes in Windows or Facebook.