While most of the automotive talk these days has been in regards to Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, we can’t forget about MirrorLink, which is also available in a variety of cars. Spotify is one of the first high-profile apps to make its way to MirrorLink, but it’s not coming as just a regular app. Thanks to the RockScout apps, many Android apps will be coming to the MirrorLink dashboard. RockScout uses the Media Browser Service API found in Android to run Spotify through the RockScout app on MirrorLink. This means that the Android App can be used in MirrorLink for free, without any other development needed. What’s even better is that the app is also open-sourced.
“Spotify is obsessed with figuring out how to bring music into every part of your life, wherever you are, whatever you’re doing,” said Lawrence Kennedy, Sr. Product Owner for Automotive at Spotify.
While MirrorLink may not be the most popular ecosystem, they aren’t backing down from the likes of Google and Apple with Android Auto and CarPlay. MirrorLink is from the Connected Cars Consortium, which includes car makers like GM, Toyota, Volkswagen, Volvo and Honda. They also have a few smartphone makers like LG, Sony and Samsung. The President of the Connected Car Consortium, Alan Ewing, states that there are around 100 million smartphones compatible with MirrorLink, and around 20 million cars available with MirrorLink, as of right now.
MirrorLink does work a lot like Android Auto. In the sense that you are basically mirroring your smartphone’s screen to the display inside your car and using the car’s controls to use the system. However, with Android Auto and Apple CarPlay being from the big companies, MirrorLink still has some catching up to do. As many people know about Android Auto, but not MirrorLink. Hopefully that will change in the future. It’s always great to have choices when it comes to what ecosystem to use for the car. But it’s hard to believe that MirrorLink is the best one as of now. However, bringing in RockScout is going to really help the platform as a whole.