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For a company that’s barely two years old and won’t produce its first telematics unit for production vehicles for at least a year, Hughes Telematics has a definite swagger as it prepares to enter a market that continues to emerge as potentially lucrative, while enhancing occupant safety.

General Motors Corp.’s wholly owned OnStar subsidiary is the giant in the telematics sector, linking some 5 million GM vehicle owners in the U.S. and Canada to security and communication services delivered automatically or by call-center operators.

But the privately owned Hughes Telematics has something OnStar doesn’t: non-GM business and the probability of winning a lot more of it. Hughes Telematics CEO Jeffrey Leddy estimates his company will provide telematics units for “tens of millions of vehicles in the next several years.”

While OnStar focuses on serving GM’s North American product portfolio – supported effectively with real-life commercials illustrating the value of OnStar – Hughes Telematics figures the remaining 75% of the vehicle fleet is up for grabs.

The telematics provider that meets this “very large, unaddressed market” with the best value, technology and service is bound to cash in, Leddy says.

Next year, Hughes Telematics will start filling that hole when it delivers the first telematics modules for Chrysler LLC vehicles in North America, followed later in the year by Mercedes-Benz.

Most important, the hardware unit will be installed as standard equipment on 100% of Chrysler and Mercedes vehicles sold in North America for the ’10 model year.