Precise positioning details, excellent entertainment: the new MINI Connected ready Apps.

Note: This press release was originally issued by MINI Global Communications and has not been adapted for the UK market.

Munich. The upgrade for customers marks a significant expansion of the brand’s internet-based services, allowing drivers and passengers to remain in touch with the wider world when in their MINI. Owners of an Apple iPhone can acquire the new MINI Connected ready Apps from the Apple App Store and install them in their car via the smartphone.

Once installed, operation of the new apps is intuitive using the MINI joystick, steering wheel buttons and high-resolution colour display of the on-board monitor. Here the various specific functions are displayed in familiar MINI style. A car must be fitted with the Radio MINI Visual Boost or MINI Navigation to be able to use the services, as well as MINI Connected option.

Real-time information makes it easier to arrange meetings with friends.

An excellent example of MINI’s enhanced digital offering is the free app Glympse. While it used to be common for friends to arrange to meet by phone or text message, with one person informing the other of the location, MINI drivers can now use Glympse.

This innovative application makes it easier to arrange a get-together while still in the car. Glympse provides real-time information relating to the user’s current location to one person or several, all determined by the user. This means that friends, acquaintances, relations, colleagues or business partners can follow the user’s position and movements, as well as a range of other car-related data such as speed and estimated time of arrival at an agreed destination.

Geolocation services have been available for some time. The online network foursquare – already available for MINI Connected customers – allows users to provide each other with information about their respective environments based on a static position. But by allowing movements to be tracked, Glympse takes this a major step further, providing a way for users to share information in real-time on a dynamic map.

Glympse sets a benchmark for data security, providing access exclusively to authorised individuals and only for a defined period of time. So after a maximum of four hours, Glympse automatically switches itself off and has to be reactivated if required. It is also possible to use the service passively without installing the app. MINI Connected customers who receive an invitation from a Glympse user by text message, e-mail, Facebook or Twitter can view the information via the web or on a mobile device.

MINI Connected ready Apps: an entertainment channel with three times the content.

Listening pleasure inside a MINI is now more diverse than ever thanks to three new Connected ready Apps – Audible, TuneIn Radio and Napster/Rhapsody.

A subsidiary of Amazon, Audible is the world’s largest producer and seller of digital spoken-word entertainment. The Audible service comprises more than 135,000 audio programmes from more than 2,700 content providers, including leading audiobook publishers, broadcasters, entertainers, newspapers and magazines and business information providers. Audible is the exclusive provider of downloadable audiobooks to Apple’s iTunes Store. With Audible’s innovative Whispersync for Voice technology, MINI drivers can switch seamlessly between reading a book on their Kindle at home and listening to the audiobook version in their car via the Audible app – without losing their place.

TuneIn Radio is a free app with more than 70,000 AM, FM, HD and Internet radio stations and more than two million on-demand programs streaming from every continent. With well over 40 million monthly active listeners, TuneIn is the most popular way to listen to live, online radio form around the world. TuneIn Radio will be familiar to MINI drivers, since the existing MINI Connected WebRadio function has an embedded TuneIn Radio script. For the first time this is now available as a separate app with extended functions.

The online music provider Napster/Rhapsody takes the option of accessing attractive audio programs inside MINI a stage further. Napster, owned and operated by U.S.-based Rhapsody International Inc., is one of Europe’s leading premium subscription digital music services and is now available in 17 European countries.

The MINI Connected ready App now gives music fans access to over 20 million songs inside their MINI. There is also extensive range of individually tailored services that allow users to discover the latest recordings by international stars as well as current albums by local up-and-coming artists. In Germany, the catalogue also includes several thousand audio books.

An ever-increasing range of possibilities – MINI Connected customers are always up-to-date.

MINI Connected customers can already draw on a unique range of in-car infotainment, while cutting-edge interface technology means the system is future-proof. The current new features demonstrate how effective the strategy is of integrating third-party apps supplied by external infotainment providers. These supplement the already extensive range of services available, including those enabling intensive driving fun and maximum efficiency, web radio, the use of Facebook and Twitter, RSS newsfeed reception, Google services and the functions Mission Control and Dynamic Music.

With every new app update, MINI Connected offers customers the option to integrate additional services and functions in their car so that they can benefit directly from the latest developments in the field.