Car navigation systems have been less successful in the US than in Japan, according to the largest vendor of car navigation chipsets, Renesas Technology.

"Only 300,000 car navigation systems were sold in the US last year - 250,000 pre-installed in cars and 50,000 sold in the after market - although new car production was 17 million vehicles," said Anand Ramamoorthy at the Globalpress Summit Conference in Monterey on Wednesday.

By contrast four million out of the five million cars sold in Japan last year had navigation systems in them and 80 per cent of them used the Renesas chipset based on the SH microprocessor.

The barrier to cracking the US market is cost, reckoned Ramamoorthy. "At the moment navigation systems cost between $1,000 and $2,500 and we think the price-point for market take-off is $500."

Where in-car electronics is popular in the US is telematics with services such as a dial-up to a call-centre to unlock a car door when the owner has lost the digital key.

"GM's Onstar service can unlock your car door from a remote location", said Ramamoorthy, "last year they had 50,000 requests to unlock car doors.