Can GM build on OnStar advantage?

DETROIT -- For an idea of just how important infotainment chief Phil Abram's job is at General Motors, check the transcript from GM's daylong investor conference last month: Executives referred to connectivity nearly 60 times.

Abram, 55, is in charge of using GM's building blocks -- namely, the industry's broadest deployment of high-speed 4G LTE connectivity and a 19-year history with OnStar -- to stake a leadership position in connected cars that GM execs believe is critical to its future.

"The next phase of the journey," GM President Dan Ammann said at the conference, "is to take our relationship with the customer beyond the car ... to the mobile device, so that we have a digital interface with out customers that exists not just when they are in the car. This is a very, very important initiative."

In a sense, that future described by Ammann is now, Abram says. During a recent interview, Abram whipped out his smartphone to show off a new app for Opel owners that allows them to remotely unlock their doors, find local restaurants and set a dealership appointment. Years from now, it might let them hail an autonomous car from, say, an Opel-branded ride-sharing service, serving as the conduit through which GM stays connected to its customers.

"Through that app, there is an interaction and relationship between not only that customer and their car but also between that customer and Opel" or GM's other brands, Abram said. "We're going to keep expanding those services."

Abram believes GM has a head start on rivals in fostering that digital relationship. He points to OnStar's Remote Link app, which offers any OnStar customer many of those same features built into the new Opel app. Customer interactions through Remote Link -- remote starts, vehicle-location requests, etc. -- have exploded to 65 million through September this year from 20 million in all of 2013.

Mark Boyadjis, an infotainment analyst at IHS Automotive, agrees that GM is positioned to be a connectivity leader because of its history with OnStar. He also believes mobile interfaces such as Remote Link will become crucial links between automakers and customers.

"Three or five years from now, the user experience of that Chevrolet app -- or the Toyota app or the Nissan app -- will be arguably as important as the user experience inside the car itself," Boyadjis said. "It becomes that owner portal to the out-of-car experience. It has to be done well."

The sharper emphasis on connectivity has raised the profile of Abram, an avid cyclist and diehard Cleveland Indians fan who came to GM in 2012 from his post as president of Sonos Inc., a maker of high-end home audio systems. Abram, who upon his arrival oversaw 16 employees in GM's infotainment unit, recently added the title of executive director of connectivity and now oversees 150.

His task now is to build on the platform created by OnStar's 4G high-speed Internet pipeline, rolled out across most of GM's lineup for the 2015 model year, to offer new, data-intensive services that go beyond streaming video to kids' iPads in the back seat. For example, OnStar launched a service this year that notifies owners of pending trouble with their battery, fuel pump or other components. The system crunches data from sensors in the vehicle and streams them through the 4G connection.

GM is betting on such differentiating services, rather than trying to duplicate the smartphone experience inside the car, Abram says. That's why it partnered with Apple Inc. and Google Inc. to deploy the Apple CarPlay and Android Auto systems, which offer a smartphone-like interface in the center stack. GM is offering the systems across dozens of vehicles for the 2016 model year. (Abrams oversees that effort, too.) It's the broadest deployment so far by any automaker, though most are migrating to them after years of consumer frustration with homegrown systems.

Abram chafes when asked why GM and other automakers are ceding such valuable real estate in the car to two deep-pocketed tech companies that could someday emerge as rivals. He says consumers have sent a clear message that they prefer to use their own smartphones to answer calls and texts, play music and, increasingly, use navigation.

"It's really hard for us to differentiate on any of those," he said. "So if I'm not going to differentiate, I can create a better experience for the customer and then invest in areas where we can do things that can't be done with the phone" such as the vehicle-health reports.

Abram, who spent the early part of his career at Eastman Kodak, says he has seen firsthand what happens when companies try to "protect things that weren't protectable."

As a business-development executive at Sony in the late 1990s, Abram patented a method for connecting MiniDisc audio players to computers. Company higher-ups killed the idea because they thought it would enable piracy of CDs.

"The challenge isn't trying to keep up. The challenge is to get ahead," Abram said. "If you can get ahead, you can win. If you can't, you have to recognize that."