IAA mobility: LG looks to accelerate in-vehicle experience with Xbox, Zoom

Company heritage

Speaking on a panel at the IAA Mobility conference in Munich, Eun Seok-hyun, president of the LG Vehicle Solution Company, was confident that the company’s heritage could pay dividends in a new arena.

“Leveraging nearly 70 years of customer experience expertise in home appliances and IT, LG has a unique competitive edge to redefine the vehicle from a simple means of transportation into a living space centred on the user experience,” he said. “We aim to supply our webOS-based ACP to 20 million vehicles by 2030 while continuously expanding our content and service ecosystem.”

Also in Munich, Chris Lee, vice-president of Xbox marketing at Microsoft, revealed that the partnership with LG represented the gaming giant’s first integration at scale into the automotive space, and that it was all part of the company aim to meet players wherever they are.

“We’ve streamed Xbox in a variety of different formats, whether that’s a browser, a smartphone [or] a handheld device, and now we have this automotive opportunity that LG has enabled for us,” he said. “What that means is, you’re not just streaming a single game; you’re streaming the entire Xbox experience. That means your friends list, the library of hundreds of games – you’ll be able to just take a compatible controller, pair it to the device in the car, and you’re off and running.

“We’re relatively new to the in-car automotive space. And so by partnering with LG and their webOS ACP, it really allows us to focus on the player experience and all those things that we’re less familiar with, in terms of safety, performance over the air updates and running partnerships with multiple OEMs. That heavy burden can be supported by our partners at LG, and so we focus on what we think players are going to want.”

The concept of meeting customers where they were being supported by LG to focus on core business was also emphasised by Ittelson, who said that as a services provider, Zoom wanted to make sure it had a platform that comes across universally.

“End users want the same experience wherever they are using Zoom – so, that’s why we’re really excited about ACP, because we’re able to leverage this platform to scale very quickly across a wide range of solutions, and it allows us to focus on our core technology and allow this to scale,” he said.

“And not only does it scale across automotive, but given LG’s larger product portfolio and Web OS, we’re able to use it in the larger product portfolio,” said Ittelson. “So, we’re really meeting users where they are, whatever device they’re using … allowing us to focus on delivering these amazing collaboration experiences for individuals.”

That said, he accepted that Zoom needed to be aware of the particular dynamics of the automotive workspace, balancing system functionality with driving safety.

“Productivity in a vehicle is different than what it is at a desk, so naturally, we need to adjust and adopt that, and keep the safety and those contexts in mind,” said Ittelson. “So, for example, if someone’s driving, it turns off the video, but it does mean that we can still have really rich, engaging interactions with voice control, and we’re looking at even more opportunities there.

“AI can play a part in this with [Zoom] AI Companion, for example, taking meeting notes, so you can be fully engaged with driving in the conversation, but then when you’re back at the desk, you have all your action items to follow up on,” he said.