Case Study: BMW achieves broader real‑world app coverage and reduced testing costs with Applause

BMW - Customer Case Study

BMW, a leader in automotive innovation, needed to ensure third‑party mobile apps worked safely and seamlessly in its in‑car UI across a wide range of production vehicles. The company faced limited access to older, unmodified cars and the complexity of integrating apps that weren’t built for in‑car use, compounded by global time zones and lab space constraints.

Applause provided crowd‑sourced, in‑the‑wild testing on real BMW and Mini production vehicles, removing the need for BMW to maintain a large test fleet and enabling testing across older platforms and unusual use cases (even track testing). The program delivered functional and usability findings that confirmed app capabilities on cars not originally designed for the framework, produced actionable usability improvements for third‑party apps, and expanded coverage beyond typical customer scenarios.

BMW

Christian Schmid

Senior Advanced Technology Engineer