Exploitation of personal I&C technologies for an optimal deployment strategy of ITS products and services

To effectively realise the future of Intelligent Transport Systems applications it is necessary to exploit all the opportunities already offered by other market sectors, that have already reached what can now be only considered a future ITS market stage, by paying due attention to the current market trends in advanced personal Information and Communications (I&C) products and services. The attitudes, requirements and expectations of these rapidly expanding and changing market segments will certainly influence the future attitudes, requirements and expectations of their customers as prospective users of future ITS applications. In this perspective the main expected features of future Personal Information and Communications products and services, able to take advantage of a widespread use of World Wide Web networking, intelligent software agents and Personal Digital Assistants of the coming second generation are assessed in view of the proposed characteristics of personal ITS applications. From the resulting evidence, a strategic framework for the identification of an optimal deployment approach is derived, which can provide future individual ITS customers with the benefits from an extensive exploitation of the highly competitive mass-markets of personal I&C products and services.