By Joseph White
DETROIT (Reuters) – General Motors Co
GM’s Marketplace technology, developed in collaboration with International Business Machines
GM will get an undisclosed amount of revenue from merchants featured on its in-dash Marketplace, Santiago Chamorro, GM vice president for global connected customer experience, said during a briefing for reporters. Customers will not be charged for using the service or the data transmitted to and from the car while making transactions, he said.
“This platform is financed by the merchants,” Chamorro said. GM will get paid for placing a merchant’s application on its screens, and “there’s some level of revenue sharing” based on each transaction, he said.
It is too soon to say how much revenue GM could realize from the Marketplace system, he said.
The GM Marketplace will compete for customer clicks and revenue with hand-held smartphones, which offer a far richer array of applications than the GM system will at the outset. Amazon.com
“We will be adding more vendors,” with some coming in the first quarter of 2018, Chamorro said. In addition, he said GM plans to expand integration into its vehicles of music, news and other information services.
GM also hopes to use its in-car Marketplace connections to expand purchases of products and services, such as additional access to in-car wifi, from its own replacement parts business and dealer network. Customers can “expect to see more service promotions coming through the platform,” Chamorro said.
(Reporting by Joe White; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)