Abalta Technologies Inc., which makes a platform to hook up people’s cars to their phones, has a new owner after receiving an investment of an undisclosed sum from Japan’s biggest digital map maker, Zenrin Co.

Zenrin, which sells its products to Japanese carmakers and had net sales of $488 million during the last fiscal year, took a 75 percent stake in Abalta, whose technology allows automakers to connect a car to a smartphone and make updates wirelessly.

Abalta, which reported 150 percent revenue growth so far this year, will maintain its headquarters in Torrance and continue to sell its products in the United States, while Zenrin will sell them in Asia, according to Gary Zuber, an account executive at Zenrin’s office in Burlingame.

Abalta hasn’t released any sales numbers, making it difficult to value the business. Calls to the company seeking comment were not returned.

The deal is part of Zenrin’s strategy to reach $700 million in consolidated revenue by 2020, the company said in a news release.

“The investment in Abalta is a key element of our plan to grow our business globally,” Zenshi Takayama, president of Zenrin, said in a statement. “They have one of the strongest engineering teams in the industry and we are excited to work with them to advance the connected car industry.”

Connected car services is projected to be a $40 billion market globally by 2020, according to a report by SNS Research.

The acquisition could help Zenrin, which counts Toyota Motor Corp. as a customer and in which Toyota has an almost 8 percent stake, meet its announced goal of producing high-definition maps that are responsive enough to real-time conditions to guide an autonomous vehicle, according to Mark Boyadjis, an automotive user experience analyst at London-based IHS Markit. Abalta’s SmartLink technology would allow the GPS to adapt more quickly to, say, a street closure.

For autonomous vehicles, you “have to have super-high-definition maps that are updated in real time,” said Boyadjis. “Delivering real time is very expensive and requires lots of engineering.”

Abalta and Zenrin are up against big-name competitors such as Google, which makes Android Auto, and Apple Inc., which makes Apple CarPlay. However, Abalta’s small size made it attractive to Zenrin, said Zuber, because it can adapt quickly to technology changes and customize its product for individual carmakers.

“At first, everyone’s arms were wide open to the big players,” he said. “But automakers felt that they might be giving up their own freedom.”

Now, Zuber said, “there’s growing interest in the players who aren’t the heavies.”