Bank of America has been running an on-going survey of Satellite Acquisition Trends (SAT) containing data collected by a 3rd party. I like this survey because as somewhat of a research geek myself, I like to see a 'clean' sampling, meaning those surveyed must be as demographically and geographically balanced as possible. BofA does a very good job at keeping this important balance, and I would highly recommend getting their full survey reports (they're being released on a monthly basis).

Anyway, below are some highlights from the BofA SAT III survey released earlier this month...

Little surprise here as we all pretty much expected SIRIUS to dominate the retail share in Dec/Jan. Retail was an important channel in last year's quarter, as well as in the beginning of this year, but the question on everyone's minds is whether this momentum will maintain. It's hard to say for sure, with the Helix/Inno/Nexus hitting the market very soon, XM may see a bump in retail activity. But then Sirius has their own portable satellite radio coming in summer, with rumors of the S50 being discontinued soon - so the retail channel has the strong possibilty of being very volatile between the two. Anyone else find it interesting that 8% don't even know which satellite radio service they have? And these are people who actually HAVE satellite radio. Shows how much brand confusion is still a factor.

Another interesting point in the BofA SAT III Survey is the reasons why people signed up for either  satellite radio provider:

Note that Stern was actually the #2 reason why people subscribed to Sirius, where the number #2 for XM was price. Let's see how these change in the quarters to follow. XM's next-gen XM2go models won't necessarily be cheap (and I'd expect the magazine reviews to point that out incessantly like they did with the S50). And the question of "The Long Tail of Stern" is still up in the air. Yes, SIRIUS has been adding subscribers at a rate of 8,760 a day, but how many of those were grabbed at the beginning of the year?

Personally I like to see the "recommended by friend or neighbor" as the readers of this site probably represent a good number of influencers in this area. (How many times did YOU recommend Sirius or XM for the Holidays?) With anomalous factors like Stern (or any other celebrity) or deep discounting taken out of the equation, you're going to be left with the tried and true three: Service, Convenience, and Word of Mouth. It'll be interesting to see what both XM and SIRIUS do to keep the momentum of these going.