January 4, 2011 
Ford announced today that they have an install base of 3 million for the Sync telematics system.
From the press release:
- Ford SYNC®, the voice-activated in-car connectivity system is now installed in more than 3 million Ford Motor Company vehicles, since first introduced in late 2007
- Latest internal research shows that more than 80 percent of SYNC owners are likely to recommend the system to others, a 5 percentage point increase over last year’s research
- More SYNC users also rely on its voice recognition system, with nearly 70 percent usage rate while driving – more than a 5 percentage point increase over previous year
- SYNC was introduced in 2007 and still maintains its introductory price as a $395 option for nearly all new-model Ford vehicles; SYNC is also standard equipment on Lincoln models
“When we introduced SYNC, we were committed to making voice recognition a highly useful tool for the driver, and this research confirms we’re on track,” said Jim Buczkowski, a Henry Ford Technical Fellow and director of Ford Electronics and Electrical Systems Engineering, Research and Advanced Engineering. “Ford remains committed to being the company that will continue to raise the bar on voice recognition as the primary user interface – giving customers the connectivity they want while helping them keep their eyes on the road and hands on the wheel.”
I decided to take a look at iTunes to see what the latest comments about the Destinations app Ford released recently. It looks like they must have released an update because the comments are divided into current version and all versions. As of this post there are 48 customer reviews. Of those reviews 25 are 1 star and all involve not being able to log in to the service. 12 reviews are 5 stars and almost all of those include some kind of log in instructions.
Then there is this comment from Kevin, who appears to be one of the developers: “Yesterday (Dec 30th) we deployed a fix that should eliminate the login problem that involves upper case, lower case and special character passwords.” For a comment from a developer, that’s not very informative. There are two more pages of comments after that still reporting the login issue.
Another reviewer said they had talked to sync help and were told to use all lower case letters in the password. I guess that’s just life on the bleeding edge but I would not feel too secure knowing the password to my car has to be all lower case letters.
So of the 3 million people driving around with the Ford Sync system only 48 wrote a review for the hot new app, of which 25 said they could not log in. Not an impressive percentage.
proc ne:)