The editors of Location Business News interviewed Cyrille Michaud, Geoflex chief sales officer, to discuss 2022 opportunities for the France-based precision positioning company.
LBN: How does Geoflex add more value to car data with precise positioning? Is that a market you see that will grow in 2022?
Michaud: “When you think about car data, location is a critical parameter, and accuracy in location is opening the door to very new opportunities. Think about map crowdsourcing: with standard GPS location you can crowdsource map for navigation, but with decimeter positioning accuracy you can crowdsource maps for lane level navigation or ADAS, a real game changer. Same thing for traffic crowdsourcing, to enable accurate lane-level traffic, for example for car pool lanes, or lane-based e-tolling. Cars are already “sensors on a wheel”… and adding a very precise location tag associated to each of these sensor’s measurements creates additional value.”
“When it comes to predictions for 2022, first it is important to understand that the car data market has seen staggering investments in 2021, with two IPOs of data aggregation platforms: Otonomo and Wejo, as well as the growing number of connected cars on the road generating billions of data points daily.”
“In 2022 the market will continue to mature. Existing uses cases will churn revenue while nascent use cases will go through proofs of concept. A share of these new use cases will be completely outside the automotive industry. Two simple examples : Out of Home Advertising where car data is used to understand the Billboard ad exposure, and road infrastructure management where car data is used to assess the quality of the road, to detect forming potholes.”
“Moving forward, as the amount of car data is growing exponentially and gets aggregated and de facto standardized, there will be a commoditization effect affecting the monetization. We expect high accuracy data will be a differentiator to avoid commoditization and maintain market value.”
LBN: How is the Airbus/Orange partnership going? Any new developments?
Michaud: “We have a number of ongoing discussions with prospects. Airbus has started to commercialize their Pléiades Neo, their new optical 30-centimeter resolution constellation in November 2021, a very unique offering which resonates well with the accuracy we can provide on the ground.”
“With Orange there are many opportunities unfolding at this time, we are working together with Orange Business Services on different RFPs and RFQs and an exciting proof of concept that is confidential at this time. It also worth mentioning that Geoflex has finished second in the Software République Mobility 4.0 Challenge, where Orange is a partner together with Renault, STMicro, Dassault Systems, Thales and Atos. As a result of the prize Geoflex is incubated in the software République, so it makes another opportunity of collaboration with Orange and other stakeholders on automotive and smart mobility topics.”
LBN: What do you see as your strongest market in 2022?
Michaud: “For Geoflex, road mobility continues to be the market with the largest traction today. However we are currently involved in projects in the drone, marine, railways and defense industries. You can also expect some Geoflex news about smartphones in the coming months. High accuracy is definitely the next big thing in location.”
Contact: Ludovic Privat, Geoflex, 33 6 22 05 61 38, www.geoflex.fr.
