Robert Bosch, Tata Consultancy Services and TomTom Join GENIVI Alliance

SAN RAMON, Calif., Jan. 5, 2011/PRNewswire/ -- The GENIVI Alliance, an automotive and consumer electronics industry association driving the development and adoption of an open In-vehicle Infotainment (IVI) reference platform, today announced that Robert Bosch GmbH, Tata Consultancy Services and TomTom have joined the Alliance as Core members.

As Core members, each will have the opportunity to participate in technical councils and working groups to help drive the technical and marketing direction of the Alliance.

Robert Bosch Car Multimedia GmbH provides intelligent solutions that allow the flexible and efficient integration of entertainment, navigation, telematics and driver assistance in the vehicle.  In this context, information presentation and processing are becoming increasingly important. Driver information and assistance systems are developed to take issues such as growing customer interest in fuel consumption and emissions reduction into account.

"Our primary goal in this Alliance is to reduce development time and minimize development costs.  Furthermore we see GENIVI as an important step towards a standardization in the infotainment domain," commented Dr.-Ing. Michael Bolle, senior vice president of the Automotive Navigation and Infotainment Systems business unit in the Bosch Car Multimedia division.

Tata Consultancy Services is an IT services, business solutions and outsourcing organization that delivers real results to global businesses, ensuring a level of certainty no other firm can match.  The Engineering and Industrial Services business is an integral element of TCS' strategy to provide product engineering and plant floor solutions to Automotive, Aerospace, Hi-tech, Telecom and other major industries. A part of the Tata group, India's largest industrial conglomerate, TCS has over 174,000 of the world's best-trained IT consultants in 42 countries.

"GENIVI has changed the in-vehicle infotainment landscape and all the key stake holders in the IVI space are going to benefit from it," said Mr. Regu Ayyaswamy, vice president & Global Head/ Engineering and Industrial Services business. "With our broad expertise in various technologies in the infotainment domain, we will be contributing actively to the GENIVI Alliance activities. We strongly believe that this association with GENIVI will help us to offer better products/services and reduce the time to market to our automotive OEM and Tier-1 customers."

TomTom N.V. (AEX: TOM2) is the world's leading provider of location and navigation solutions. Headquartered in The Netherlands, it employs over 3,000 employees worldwide. Over 50 million people daily use its solutions, be it in the form of dedicated portable navigation devices (PNDs), in-dash car systems or tracking and tracing solutions for fleet management.  In addition, hundreds of millions of people use TomTom's digital maps on the internet or mobile phone.

TomTom Automotive provides automotive manufacturers and their suppliers with location and navigation solutions including integrated navigation systems, LIVE services as well as advanced automotive grade mapping content.

"Shared standards will benefit everyone, by enabling shortened development cycles, quicker time-to-market, and reduced costs for all companies developing in-vehicle infotainment equipment and software," says Giles Shrimpton, managing director, TomTom Automotive.

This step underlines TomTom's commitment to open innovation and platforms, with the aim of providing producers with a common software platform on which to base future in-vehicle infotainment systems.

In addition, Alten SA, BearingPoint GmbH, BSQUARE, Galician Automotive Technology Centre (CTAG), Harman International Industries, Infobank Corporation, Intrinsyc Software International, MFORMATION Technologies, Mitac International Corporation and Vitec Co., Ltd. have joined the Alliance as Associate members bringing the total membership to nearly 100 companies spanning the entire automotive ecosystem.

"The addition of these very influential Core members, along with our new Associate members seeking next generation infotainment solutions only strengthens the Alliance," said Graham Smethurst, GENIVI president.  "The continued interest of companies as prestigious as these validates the Alliances mission of reducing the cost of developing IVI devices and greatly reducing the time to bring innovative, differentiated IVI devices to the consumer market."

About GENIVI Alliance

GENIVI Alliance is a non-profit industry association whose mission is to drive the broad adoption of an In-Vehicle Infotainment (IVI) open source development platform.  GENIVI will accomplish this by aligning requirements, delivering reference implementations, offering certification programs and fostering a vibrant open source IVI community. GENIVI's work will result in shortened development cycles, quicker time-to-market, and reduced costs for companies developing IVI equipment and software.  GENIVI is headquartered in San Ramon, Calif. www.genivi.org.

SOURCE GENIVI Alliance