HD Radio to explode in growth by 2015, says firm

LOLLERCOASTER! These guys are insane. "HD" Radio is so dead.

Another Struble-sponsored "study", like the one supposedly done by Comscore validating consumer demand for HD Radio in cell phones. There never was any such study:

http://tinyurl.com/22tppy4

This is how Struble keeps HD Radio "alive", through bogus "studies". The HD Radio Alliance was famous for spreading manipulated studies done by Clear Channel-owned Critical Mass Media. There is virtually no HD Radio outside the US, as European countries have adopted DAB/DAB+. DAB has also been a complete flop in Europe as the UK, Germany, and Canada have admitted to such.

Analog FM is to become the global standard in cell phones, not HD Radio, or DAB. The UK and US have only analog FM in cell phones. With the Zune HD as a trial run for HD Radio, Microsoft is stipulating analog FM in cell phones, as with Google. Apple is keeping HD Radio at arms-length as an adaptor. Unbelieveable garbage.

Yawn...

Who do they think they're kidding? HD Radio is stillborn technology absolutely NO ONE cares about.

Isn't HD Radio still just rehashed versions of the current market's FM programming? Can we expect new and original programming like SiriusXM? Why would anyone want the same garbage that is currently on the air in a in a different format. Seriously, am I missing something here?

Quite honestly Ryan, I think putting terrestrial radio chips in cellphones is a natural fit and pretty inevitable. Consumers always want more choice. Also I would like to see a sat radio chip put in a cellphone. Why not?

It is quite obvious that cellphones are the next walkman and there will be hundreds of thousands of radio stations available through apps, chips etc. And probably quite soon.

As a business model the barrier to entry is nothing for getting a radio app on a cellphone. So the business model is as weak as the internet radio business model. But for the consumer it most definitely is replacing the transistor, walkman, ipod. It's the next incarnation.

Good luck to anyone who tries to get HD radio to come in on a smartphone. Many of the latest versions of popular cell phones can't reliably hold on to a phone call, and this is with built-in antennas that are (presumably) sized precisely for the correct wavelength.

An optimal antenna length for FM is about 5 feet, and, as someone who owns an HD radio, I assure you that an optimal antenna is needed to receive HD radio with any sort of reliability. Since I doubt most people will want to extend a 5-foot (or even a 1-foot) antenna on the end of their smartphone, HD radio reception on one of these phones would require living very close to an HD radio station's transmitter.

However, HD radio might in some forms be a competition for satellite radio: Since analog terrestrial, HD terrestrial and satellite radio all serve up the same canned, stale formats, people may well decide not to pay for satellite radio since said programming is available for free. But, it'd be nice if, rather than trying to get essentially worthless hardware shoehorned into smartphones, the HD industry would look at serving up some decent programming that might motivate people to go out and buy an HD radio.

Wireless carriers are backing away from unlimited data plans due to torrents, not Internet radio. You can't make money building out networks with loads of bandwidth so your users can more easily and mostly illegally share content with better anonymity than if they do it on their home internet connection. Smartphones are going to kill radio, especially HD radio. Services like Pandora are where the "boom" will be.

I bet that if I could get high enough, I could almost see how a totally ignorant fool would believe that adding HD Radio to a handheld device would spurr interest and help preserve bandwidth. But really, in a time when you practically have to live by a cell tower to get signal, what performance are we to expect from devices with no care for antenna design trying to receive from HD sources with 1/10th the transmitting power of traditional FM.

Come on already!

Call me stupid, but why do so many think it's hard to put a sat rad chip in a smartphone?!

Look at the Xmp3 player, it's very small, yet picks up sat on the move. Now, look at the skydock.

All Sirius/Xm has to do is create a small add on antenna to the iphone. It's that simple. No need to shoehorn anything. The technology is easy. It's already very doable, and should be on the market now.

The NAB & RIAA now want to force cell phone manufacturers to include terrestrial radios. I am unclear about if this means HD radios. These guys are desperate.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/08/radio-riaa-mandatory-fm-radio-in-cell-phones-is-the-future.ars

I think xcountry's last paragraph sums it up well. Sad that Slacker and Pandora, which are not much more than glorified algorithm-powered jukeboxes set on Random, are better than everything else.

LMFAO AT Humpty Dumpty Radio !

What a joke- these guys will stop at nothing and have no shame whatsoever. As far as mandating FM on cell phones, these are the same jerks who are avoiding their responsibilities to pay artists royalties like everyone else does, while wearing their "free market" American flag lapel pins.

Scum. Pure scum.

Here's something you may want to mull over: In the United Kingdom, the government earlier this year issued a digital radio mandate, saying that all radio broadcasting there would convert to digital by 2015. Of course, consumers and many broadcasters there have been angry about it, and 94 percent of people surveyed there say they are happy with current analog radio services and do not want to change.

But, the law also has a provisions saying the digital transition will not take place until 50 percent of radio listening there takes place digitally (now the percentage is negligible there, as it is here in the U.S.), and that the 2015 date is really more of a target to provide an incentive for people to buy equipment, and not a firm transition date.

The nearly universal negative reaction of the British public to this changeover, which can on thorough examination really only be considered a proposal at this point, provides some insight into what would probably happen here if such a switch were proposed, and also indicates that people's satisfaction with current radio services is behind their hesitance to adopt HD.

Looking at the possibility of a mandated transition to HD radio, the practical barriers are staggering. The digital TV transition was postponed two or three times before they finally pulled the trigger and let it happen -- and that was a situation where something like 80 percent of the people didn't need to do anything because they already had cable or satellite that would take care of the transition for them. Essentially all radio listening is over the air, so all of the billion or so radios in the U.S. would be made obsolete.