Ford will introduce AppLink in Europe on the EcoSport with Spotify

Once again, the blue oval has played a prominent role at the Mobile World Congress held in Barcelona around this time of year. If last year brought the SYNC system, presented in the B-Max, 2013 marks the arrival of AppLink, a feature of that same software, and of the first services it will have available in Europe. Gradually, Ford vehicles on this continent are catching up with the technology they already enjoy in North America.

We already told you about the first details of AppLink and how it works a month ago. But now Ford has confirmed the information that was missing from its presentation at the World Mobile Congress. To begin with, the model that will debut it will be the EcoSport, whose version modified for the European market will debut in March at the Geneva Motor Show. That said, we remind you that AppLink will not arrive until the end of 2013.

Perhaps the most important thing for those interested in AppLink is the range of applications that SYNC will be able to control through a connection with a smartphone. One of the first announced for Europe is Spotify. The streaming music service enjoys high popularity in many countries in the region (it is present in 17) and is also very well known in Spain. With AppLink, vehicle occupants will be able to choose a song by searching on Spotify or from their own playlists.

SYNC will also give them the option of controlling everything by voice, with commands such as “favourite track”, “recently played songs” and “now playing” to recall which song had been chosen. Other compatible applications are Kaliki Audio Newsstand, a newspaper reader that reads aloud; Glympse, with which the car’s position and estimated arrival time can be sent to certain contacts on the smartphone; and Aha, a very comprehensive service with a news reader, social media feeds and weather forecasts, among others. In the future the range of applications will continue to expand, so that the European and North American offerings will become equal.

Source: Ford