Back in December, SIRIUS Satellite Radio CFO David Frear mentioned that Sirius will be power optimizing the S50 chip to receive live satellite radio while on-the-go. The release date was expected mid-2006 at the time. And remember last month when Mel Karmazin gave some highlights of the upcoming Satellite Radio/MP3 device? There we learned again that the release is still on track for Summer 2006, as well as having their own "Buy Button" capabilities.
Now according to anonymous sources, the rumored release date is in the month of July. The device will also supposedly come with more storage capacity than the Inno or Helix. Since the S50 is 1Gb, the logical progression would be for 2Gb (especially since both the Helix/Inno are increasing capacity later this year as well).
So could we be seeing a live portable Sirius S100 this July?
Since there is no official word on this, let's be clear that this is still unconfirmed information and until I know further I will treat it as such. Still, a live wearable receiver + Buy Button + 2Gb storage capacity, shows that Sirius might be making serious headway on the technology front. Exciting news.
Still the question remains - with the "Buy Button" functionality, who will they partner with to fulfill the songs?
(Sirius S50 pictured above)
They make stand alone GPS receivers and they are pretty compact. I have to believe that the S100 can be pretty small.