Applidium, a software development company in Paris, has hacked into the servers that support the iPhone (News - Alert) 4S. I commented on it in my 4GWE Mobility Tech Zone article, but I want to suggest that there is an interesting nuance here in telematics.

Mobile and Mobility are intertwined and the issue of texting while driving is near and dear to my heart. In Cleverspoke , Ed Guy and I have a patent pending (thanks mostly to Ed and Jonathan Askin’s students at Brooklyn Law).

The processing for speech recognition is better done remotely and Siri does that with a very chatty protocol. The hack shows the Siri Servers can be accessed either over 3G (Apple does not support 4G they just name their phones like they do) and WiFi (News - Alert).

The hack has also enabled third parties to perhaps augment the capabilities of the Siri system and build an app in Android or other platforms.

So we could see a system that involves telematics. For a tablet. 

Currently the iPad is not well designed for a car. As our friend Richard Shockey (News - Alert) points out, the 7” iPad would open up an additional market. Right now the space is dominated by devices from HTC, RIM, and Samsung.

I have heard several solutions in telematics that utilize these systems but none currently are designed for a voice interface. The tablets gather and transmit, display and distribute. But talk? Not really.

And yet, the driver is most efficient in motion.

So it’s logical to think that Siri, which is very good at contextual speech recognition and understanding the differences between transcriptions and commands, could find a natural opportunity in the telematics space.

Regardless of whether or not Apple (News - Alert) chooses to explore this opportunity, the window has been opened and chance exists for some new solutions in telematics based on either the hack or Apple extending access into Siri.

I think this space is gearing up, and I would love to see Apple move forward, rather than having third parties park on them.