C. Scott Brown / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Morgan Stanley’s new audio entertainment survey identifies a decline in Android Auto penetration among streamers in 2024.
- Apple and CarPlay are up slightly, but not enough to explain all of Auto’s losses.
- Overall, listeners are gradually moving away from traditional radio, but its dominance persists.
Android, as a whole, has been hugely successful, and this versatile platform has found its way onto everything from our phones to our wrists. But there are still some areas where Android’s influence seems a little shaky, and one of the most uncertain spaces it occupies is probably in our vehicles. Sure, we have Android Auto, Android Automotive, and even Google Built-in, but automakers can notoriously control what experiences their vehicles are compatible with. Even as companies like Hyundai signal their support, Android’s future in cars is far from certain, and new statistics now give us new reasons to worry.
The information we’re looking at comes via a somewhat surprising source, as it appears in Morgan Stanley’s latest audio entertainment survey, shared by the smartphone analyst. Max Weinbach on X earlier this week (via 9to5Google). We’ll return to some of the interesting listening trends identified by the report in a moment, but from a platform perspective, the main takeaway here is that CarPlay usage is up slightly among audio streamers (up to around 2%), while Android Automotive’s share is down 7%.
While it’s possible that some of this change comes from different listening habits and drivers’ choice of options like FM radio over IP streaming, it still doesn’t look great for Android Auto. That said, this is still just a single data point, and before we start panicking over an Android Auto exodus, we’ll definitely want to see how this number changes over time.
OK, enough pessimism about Android Auto! What other interesting statistics does this data contain?
According to the survey, drivers simply aren’t listening to as much music in their vehicles as they used to, with popularity dropping from 45% in 2017 to just 27% last year. But when they do, they slowly move away from radio and choose more and more streaming options. However, as you can clearly see above, there’s still a long way to go before radio is defeated: it’s only down 3% over the past year.
Although it doesn’t make this ranking, TikTok for in-car entertainment is on the rise – but who knows how long that will last? The long-threatened US ban threatens the streaming service, and unless something happens soon, TikTok could effectively shut down starting this Sunday.
