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December 16, 2004
iPod Satellite considered Technically Unfeasible
We pretty much knew this all along but to April Horace, a Janco Partners analyst, deemed the rumored iPod with Sirius satellite radio as technologically unfeasible right now.
"I don't believe Sirius' chip set is at the point where it can go into an iPod. It's the size of a credit card, and an iPod would need a chip set the size of a thumb nail," she said.
That's not to say the industry isn't thinking about it. After launching its wearable MyFi device in October, XM chief executive Hugh Panero said he believed one day a portable satellite player would be combined with a device like an iPod. Assuming the XM chipset would fit in an iPod, then Panero's concept for cell phones having satellite radio would be possible as well.
Sirius chairman Joseph Clayton has said over the past several months that when Sirius has its third generation chip set ready, expected by as early as late summer, it will enable Sirius to make a device similar to the MyFi - the new Brix palm-sized receiver may be our glance into this next gen of Sirius devices.
December 16, 2004 12:31 PM
Comments
technically unfeasable...
boy I bet analyst said the same thing about cell phones... They were about the size of a brick.
Then there was combing a digital camera with a cell phone.
Sirius is already working with a 2nd chipset manufacturer. How stupid can this analyst be. If their current chipset is about the size of a credit card I would bet that it will be about the size of a postage stamp by summer
Posted by: kwik at December 17, 2004 04:47 AM
As I pointed out in the entry:
"Sirius chairman Joseph Clayton has said over the past several months that when Sirius has its third generation chip set ready, expected by as early as late summer, it will enable Sirius to make a device similar to the MyFi "
Making a postage-stamp size chip isn't exactly easy, but I guarantee that both Sirius and XM are working their asses off to get to that point.
Harddrive Space is becoming a commodity - 80gig iPods will probably be available next summer - so the next step is add more value to music devices and the iPod Satellite is a logical step.
Who will be the first to get to market it with? *That's* the question.
Posted by: Ryan at December 17, 2004 08:00 AM
