Switching to subscription-based infotainment services: BMW case

More than a year ago BMW announced its plans to charge their customers for the in-car infotainment system — Apple CarPlay. From now on, the beloved service became subscription-based. Anyways, 2019 models owners will have the free access to it for a year, but after that, they’ll have to pay $80 annually to continue using Siri-powered smart suggestions on the optimal commands and apps, music control, a navigation system, and other updated features.

CarPlay actually has been added to the cars from BMW in 2017 as a $300 built-in navigation option. The decision to make it subscription-based is presented to be beneficial for customers decided to switch the service or just stop using it a all. On the contrary, in case a customer decided to keep the service over the course of a three-year lease, they would end up paying less than the one-time cost of $300, as the first three years would cost just $160, four years would cost $240, and so on. 

Besides, BMW also had plans to equip the new cars with Alexa from Amazon and later on, the Google Assistant. Yet it’s rather unclear how god this idea is. Whether such systems will pave the way to replace the OEM-branded in-vehicle infotainment services or not? We will keep watching the future conjuncture of automotive systems market.