Here's Why Your Future Car Will Be Full Of Apps

Alex Davies

Apps are already making their way into cars.

Ford has embraced the connected car movement with its Sync platform, which integrates apps like Amazon Cloud Player, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal Live into the car dashboard.

And the Tesla Model S touchscreen connects to the Internet for access to things like maps, restaurant reviews, and movie times.

But by 2017, twenty percent of cars in the U.S. and Western Europe will be app-enabled, according to analysts over at Juniper Research.

That means we'll have more cars on the road with "infotainment" features through smartphone tethering and in-car systems, according to Juniper.

We first saw the news over on GigaOm.

“Demand is growing as consumers are used to the smartphone/app combination out of the car and are beginning to want it in the in-car environment,” Juniper analyst Anthony Cox told GigaOm's David Meyer. “What is driving this, though, is the fact that it has become easier to do through standards such as MirrorLink and therefore is reaching critical mass very fast."