GM first with remote car link for Windows smartphones

James R. Healey | USA TODAY

General Motors is making a popular applications available for the fast-growing Windows phone, which automakers largely have ignored in their connectivity suites.

Called RemoteLink, GM says it's the "first remote telemetry app from an automaker to work on all four primary smartphone platforms – iPhone, Android, Blackberry and now Microsoft Windows phones."

The portion of RemoteLink that's tied into the GM OnStar subscription service allows connecting to the vehicle remotely from a smartphone, for a variety of uses. The car company says it's used most often to check vehicle data such as oil life, tire pressure and fuel level. Owners do that nearly 600,000 times a month, GM says.

The free-for-five-years portion of RemoteLink gives smartphone users the same features as on a remote-lock key fob. That allows owners to do those tricks you see on TV ads, such as lock and unlock the car from the middle of nowhere, as well as flash the lights and set off the horn.

That means nervous types can, for instance, verify the doors are locked on their Chevrolets parked at the airport in Kansas City when they arrive in Los Angles and are second-guessing themselves.

GM CEO Dan Akerson was a telecommunications executive before he took the top job at GM in 2010. He's known to have little patience for sluggish telecommunications advances in GM cars and trucks.

Windows phones -- nearly all of them sold by Nokia -- jumped to No. 3 in the U.S. smartphone market earlier this year, passing the skidding BlackBerry system.

Windows phones' slice is still tiny, less than 4% of overall U.S. smartphone sales, but its sales are growing faster than iPhone sales or Android-system phone sales. Android and Apple systems are No. 1 and No. 2 in sales, and together account for about 93% of U.S. new smartphone sales.

Because automotive electronics are developed well in advance, many of the systems on today's new vehicles didn't account for the all-but-invisible Windows phone operating system when the auto software was locked into place.

Some will work with Windows phones, some won't. And the ones that do work don't always stay linked, often requiring a user to re-pair a Windows phone.