Vehicle Entertainment Survey: Drivers More Likely to Use Built-In Options

Vehicles are getting more technologically advanced, even when it comes to entertainment options. But those advances don’t necessarily have to just involve the vehicles themselves. Since smartphones are becoming such a huge part of daily life for so many consumers, it makes sense that services like Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are catching on to allow consumers to simply connect those devices to their vehicles. In fact, this report by Abalta suggests that smartphones might be a big part of the connected car industry going forward. So how many consumers are connecting their smartphones to their vehicles? And how do those options compare to other vehicle entertainment options? We asked 1,000 respondents on September 15-17 about their thoughts on the different options for vehicle entertainment.

Vehicle Owners

In Ask Your Target Market’s latest survey, 69% of respondents said that they currently own or lease a vehicle. 87% of those respondents said that they have a regular radio in their vehicles. 69% have CD players in their cars. 22% have satellite radio. 16% have a DVD player. 13% have music streaming options. And 5% have other vehicle entertainment options, like a cassette player or auxiliary connection for their MP3 devices.

Vehicle Entertainment

More specifically, 78% of vehicle owners said that they regularly listen to the radio in the car. 38% listen to CDs. 15% listen to satellite radio. 14% use music streaming services in their cars. 12% use vehicle DVD players. And 5% use other vehicle entertainment options like cassette players or auxiliary connections.Overall, just 12% of vehicle owners said that they purchased additional entertainment options for their vehicles from brands like Sony, Pioneer, Sirius and Infinity. But 81% said that they just use the entertainment options that came with their vehicles. And the remaining 7% were unsure.

Smartphone Connections

In general, 70% of respondents said that they currently own a smartphone. And 8% of those smartphone owners said that they often connect their phone to their vehicle through systems like Apple CarPlay or Android Auto. 10% said they sometimes connect their phone to their vehicle. 8% rarely use such features. And 74% never do. Of those who have connected their smartphones to their vehicles, 70% said they use those connected features so they can listen to music. 64% use it so they can make hands-free phone calls. 57% use GPS features. And 31% connect their phones to their vehicles so they can check or dictate messages or emails.

Key Takeaways

So far, only a moderate amount of car owners have started regularly connecting their smartphones to their vehicles. But it’s still a more popular option than actually buying additional entertainment options for vehicles. For companies that make vehicle entertainment products or solutions, it seems that the best way to attract customers is to make it really easy for them. Consumers are somewhat more likely to connect their smartphones instead of buying separate products or services because they already own those devices anyway. And going that route also gives them access to several different functions. Car buyers are much more likely to stick with the entertainment options already in their vehicles, so getting entertainment services or apps featured in vehicles or smartphones seems to have more potential for success than creating a whole new product or service that customers would have to go out of their way to purchase. You can view the complete survey results in the widget below and be sure to click “Open Full Report” to take advantage of all the chart and filter options.Photo Credit: Apple-CarPlay by Sam Churchill under CC BY 2.0What do you want to know? If you need some consumer insights on a particular topic, let us know in the comments below and we’ll consider it for an upcoming survey post.

Results were collected on September 15-17 via AYTM’s online survey panel.