The full name of OTA Over The Air (over-the-air download technology), originally applied to the first batch of smart devices such as smartphones, refers to the function upgrade or problem repair of wireless networks provided by SIM cards, WiFi, etc., and can also be divided into FOTA that completely upgrades the system/firmware and SOTA that upgrades sporadic software.
Baidu Secure OTA Solution
The application of this technology was originally intended to get rid of the limitation that devices need to connect to a PC for firmware and software upgrades, and to further optimize the long-term experience of such mobile smart devices. With the continuous expansion of the field of intelligence, there are more home appliances including TVs and even intelligent cars have also entered the ranks of OTA support, and now automotive OTAs have become an enduring industry hot word due to the collision of the old and new concepts of more concentrated concept marketing and after-sales concepts.
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There have been many fierce exchanges of views in the automotive space, but it's important to know that OTAs are epoch-making for most of today's after-sales services for electronics, even if we're used to the existence of this mediocre feature. For most of today's consumer goods, after-sales service can be basically divided into two categories: one is the maintenance of hardware, the other is the continuous update support of software, and for electronic products, its nature determines that the latter occupies a major position in terms of functionality. Many times vendors and users are powerless on hardware because it cannot exist as a replaceable part due to the higher level of integration, for example, you may think that a mobile phone is slow and stuttering, but you cannot replace it with a higher performance SoC or add more running memory to solve the problem.
The modification of the hardware by the manufacturer will often produce a new product, which can not be regarded as "after-sales service", so in order not to let consumers feel that they are "abandoned", it is necessary to update the software level support for the products that consumers have arrived, sometimes to optimize the operation efficiency, sometimes to provide more functions to alleviate the limitations of the hardware level and solve the problems in use, which is the original intention of OTA.
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The original intention seems to be beautiful, but the current OTA is more associated with negative phenomena such as defects, de-allocation, and pie painting, which I think is caused by the combination of multiple factors such as consumer psychology.
Taking the automobile as an example, in the context of the electrification of the vehicle architecture and the development of new energy vehicles, the influence of the OTA function has become more and more deeply rooted in the bottom layer of the automobile function, including the ECU (driving computer), that is to say, only relying on OTA upgrades can change some driving characteristics such as the power and endurance of the vehicle.
For manufacturers, this naturally helps them to find problems and solve problems more efficiently, while reducing the cost of after-sales service, but for consumers, this will create a kind of information gap: "The car I bought may have some problems at the factory, and the manufacturer later found this problem and fixed it through OTA, but whether this matter is told to me or not depends entirely on the manufacturer." "This is a world of difference from the past recall system for defective automotive products, although it is not uncommon for automobile batch recalls, but each time it will be supervised by the relevant departments, appearing in public opinion, not only for consumers to play a role in informing the public, but also for the industry to remind."
When an OTA replaces some of the recalled after-sales service functions, it is difficult to be exposed and regulated. The document released by the State Administration for Market Regulation in 2020 pointed out that when a producer adopts the OTA method to eliminate defects in automotive products and (in essence) implements a recall, it should file a record with the Quality Development Bureau of the State Administration for Market Regulations in accordance with the requirements of the Regulations on the Administration of the Recall of Defective Automotive Products and the Implementation Measures for the Administration of the Recall of Defective Automotive Products, and perform the main responsibility of the recall in accordance with the law. It can be seen that at present, there are still no more detailed rules on the relevant policies, and it is in the programmatic stage, and it is up to the enterprise to determine whether the OTA upgrade content is in line with the nature of the defect recall, and whether to file the OTA.
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The second phenomenon has caused more controversy among consumers, coming from our disapproval of "soft allocation reduction", also using cars as an example. Suppose that a brand of car in the production of different configuration styles do not make hardware differences, but through the form of software to distinguish different configurations, such as seat heating, automatic assisted driving and other functions in the lower price of the model is shielded at the software level, but they are essentially built-in to provide support hardware.
That is to say, after purchasing a low-end model, if consumers want to activate these functions, they need to pay an additional fee first and then upgrade through OTA. From a certain point of view, the unification of this specification configuration is largely convenient for production, but also more conducive to consumers' flexible choice, after the car is sold and then installed through official channels, which is difficult to achieve in the traditional automotive industry. But if you think about it from another angle, it will make consumers doubt the cost of these extra features, after all, the lower price can already meet the cost of all the hardware, but some technologies, intellectual property and even a string of code and other "virtual products" will incur additional costs, which is difficult for many people to understand.
The last phenomenon covers all technology digital products and services from cars to mobile phones, PCs, etc. "Pie" is essentially a commitment to consumers and potential consumers, due to the OTA capabilities commonly possessed by the current technology digital products, there are many functions that cannot be provided at the beginning of the sale by manufacturers to consumers to promise that they can provide in the future, thus attracting more people to choose.
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Nowadays, the speed of upgrading digital products such as mobile phones has been compressed to about half a year to a year, and the relatively short development cycle makes new systems and new features sometimes less "stable", and the developers' energy is more used to fix problems and improve functions, which also forms the main theme of OTA content. For consumers, they will find that a large part of the envisaged OTA update support that brings up with the times is used to fix bugs, and for a product, the number of OTA upgrades it can accept at the system/firmware level is bound to be limited, which is also affected by the hardware level that the OTA cannot solve.
Taking Google's pro-son Pixel phone as an example, Google may provide 4 major operating system updates for the Pixel 6; The strongest nail in Apple's product line, the iPhone 6s, supported from iOS 8 to iOS 15, spanning seven generations of operating systems, but after the large version update is stopped, digital products that only maintain basic functions can only urge users to "change" through increasingly backward performance and experience.
In the author's opinion, "follow-up OTA support" may be a strategy to quench the thirst and slow down the army: there are no perfect functions provided through the follow-up OTA, and the problems that are not exposed at the moment are fixed through the OTA after discovery. OTAs seem to be more and more likely to be the reason for digital products to be poorly polished before launch, and consumers who directly experience first-hand experience can also know that it is difficult for us to find a product that is perfect at the beginning of the start, but follow-up OTA support is still a legitimate reason, the best way to keep pace with the times, and the only life-saving straw for digital products not to be eliminated in the short term.
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