General Motors’ AppShop Rollout Postponed Indefinitely
6
Sponsored Links
In April, we told you that General Motors was delaying the rollout of its in-vehicle AppShop functionality until 2015 due to issues with quality and customer experience. Now, the company has announced it will delay the rollout of AppShop indefinitely due to it not meeting company expectations.
“The App Shop didn’t meet our customer experience expectations, and so we’ve delayed the introduction of it,” said GM chief infotainment officer Phil Abram. “I don’t have a date today to share with you on when we will be bringing it out.”
GM originally planned to introduce App Shop (and Cadillac equivalent CUE Collection) this summer with several launch apps including Weather Channel, TuneIn Radio, and Eventseeker. It would have been complimented by GM’s in-vehicle 4G LTE Wi-Fi technology, which is still on track to be introduced in 2015 model year GM vehicles. GM says that it did a lot of internal testing with AppShop, but ultimately decided it wasn’t ready for market use.
“If it’s not right, we’re not going to put it out there,” Abrams said.
When it is ready for consumers, AppShop will launch first on the 2015 Chevrolet Corvette C7, Impala, Malibu and Volt, followed by the Equinox, Silverado, Silverado HD, Spark and Spark EV. GM made no announcements regarding CUE Collection, a version of AppShop that was destined for Cadillac vehicles, but it is assumed the rollout of that program is also postponed until further notice.
- Sweepstakes Of The Month: Win a Corvette Z06 and 2024 Silverado. Details here.
Sponsored Links
There is another possibility of course. They could work more with either Apple or Android to bring a major platform to their vehicles. Why build apps and an app store when Apple and Google will gladly bring their existing platforms to GM?
It does seem more reasonable to focus on CarPlay integration. (We have to remember that CarPlay didn’t exist when GM promised App Shop/CUE Collection to customers.)
In-car technology is something that can really differentiate one brand from another and GM is seemingly falling behind in this respect. There are many things GM could allow developers to do with their in-car apps that iOS apps cannot easily do (full integration with in-car systems like XM, OnStar, vehicle settings, diagnostics/system status, etc.).
Overall, it’s better that GM not roll out something that’s badly implemented and will hurt customer satisfaction, but it’s disappointing to see this effort flounder.
I think this says a lot about the state of GM’s software engineering capabilities and helps explain why they’re trying to bring more development in-house. I hope they’re working closely behind the scenes with Apple to be at the forefront of CarPlay adoption and designing systems that are flexible and powerful enough to remain useful for several software generations.
Android, vehicle ROM, in your dash and be done with it.
Not surprised they are having problems. GM still hasn’t fixed iPod integration problems with the Chevy MyLink in 2013 cars.
Android… It’s maps are unbeatable.
If they would just open source the damn thing, there would be thousands of developers that could fix the ipod integration problem. Instead, they want you to buy a new car to get the updated system.