It’s an awkward fact of life for the automotive industry that it takes a long time to design and build a car. Yet at the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show, the European IFA technology fair and this week at the Geneva Motor Show, the whole industry has for several years now been endeavouring to walk the same walk as Samsung, Apple and other technology brands, who each bring out new models every few months.

On the one hand, car manufacturers have been hugely innovative, with new engines and electric motors bringing unprecedented efficiencies, and with head-up displays feeling futuristic for cars even though they have been around in aircraft for decades. But when it comes to satellite navigation and interior design, few vehicles match the sleek, minimalist appearance that big technology brands have pioneered.

The renewed integration of Apple’s iPhone, however, could yet change that. It is not the first time that smartphones and tablets have been used in vehicles, but yesterday’s announcement of CarPlay, as Apple now calls it, is an industry-wide development that means Apple Maps, voice assistant Siri and a host of other features can all be included easily. Google’s Android, although more fragmented than Apple’s iPhone, is also of huge appeal to manufacturers.

Volvo, for instance is accompanying CarPlay with a whole new cockpit design, using just eight buttons where there were previously many more, and adopting the swiping and pinching language that is so familiar to smartphone and tablet users. Combined with its idea of opening up the vehicle to a world of apps, long also available to Ford customers, there’s a sense that the smart car is finally with us.

Other features, such as genuinely integrated smart monitoring of car performance, could also put an end to the tedium of arbitrary service intervals, making cars both better to sit in and more efficient.