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Cars and Drivers

Ford Brings New Android and Apple Features to Cars

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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Ford Brings New Android and Apple Features to Cars

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Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F), in an attempt to keep up with the competition in the smart car market, has added two new features to its suite. Each is an upgrade to Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL) and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) products that the company already uses.

According to Ford the new features are:

Ford SYNC 3 software update brings support for Android Auto and Apple CarPlay to model-year 2016 vehicles
Customers can update by downloading the software to a USB drive, visiting a dealership or over-the-air via a Wi-Fi connection
This is Ford’s first software update via Wi-Fi and offers a convenient and automated alternative to existing upgrade methods

The Android software covers devices with the 5.0 version or higher. It includes often-used products like Google Maps and Android phone features like voice control. Apple CarPlay works with iPhone 5 or later version phones of with iOS 7.1 or higher. It includes hands-free text, Apple music and connections to many iPhone products.

[nativounit]

Ford has had trouble keeping up with competition in sales. It is considered the weakest U.S. car company. Its shares trade near a 52-week low. Ford recently laid off many of its nonunion workers in North America and Asia. Some outsiders wonder if CEO Mark Fields will keep his job.

Virtually all new cars sold in the United States have a number of smart car features. Often among these are navigation with verbal directors, hands-free phones, lane departure and collision warnings, and diagnostics that tell the driver if the engine or other critical car parts have problems.

However, many drivers do not like the features because they are complicated. Research firm J.D. Power found, in a 2012 survey, that people disliked Ford advanced technology that in many cases they say negatively affected quality.

Ford’s new initiative adds some fairly basic software features to some of its cars. None of them have features that are uncommon, so Ford is keeping up with the competition, but not moving ahead.

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Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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