HD Radio Unit Sales to Reach 7.5 Million This Year, iBiquity Says
HD Radio sales will hit about 7.5 million units this year, up from about 5.2 million in 2013, due largely to continued deployment in vehicles, said iBiquity Digital CEO Bob Struble in an interview. Many FM stations and a smaller number of AMs are using HD Radio from iBiquity, which licenses the digital-radio technology, and some FMs have boosted the power levels after the FCC allowed it (CD June 21 p8). Radio stations increasingly see HD Radio use in cars as a way to compete with so-called connected vehicle technology, executives have told us.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
If your job depends on informed compliance, you need International Trade Today. Delivered every business day and available any time online, only International Trade Today helps you stay current on the increasingly complex international trade regulatory environment.
Growing HD Radio sales, largely through audio/visual receivers, desktop, portable and auto radios, have come despite the technology’s failing in the eyes of some in the industry after years of efforts to find a home in rapidly proliferating tablets and smartphones. HD Radio’s efforts in mobile began with standard cellphones and continued with a push for tablet and smartphone deployments in 2012. About 50 new HD Radio receivers were demonstrated at CES, about 30 of which were car aftermarket products. HD Radio-enabled tablets also were shown at CES and iBiquity is working to land retail distribution, Struble said. Since launch in 2004, about 17.5 million HD Radios have been sold, 15 million of which are installed in vehicles, iBiquity has said. The listening hours for HD Radio increased to 3 billion in 2013, up from 2 billion the previous year, Struble said.
The barrier for HD Radio in smartphones has been that handset suppliers and wireless carriers were slow to activate the FM analog chips already built into the products, industry officials have said. Once the FM activations are widely deployed, HD Radio becomes a viable option for smartphones, Struble said. IBiquity’s in-band on-channel digital radio technology is used by 2,200 U.S. AM and FM stations to transmit digital audio and data immediately above and below a broadcaster’s standard analog signal. Only Sprint (CD Jan 10 p10) has moved to activate the FM chips in select models including the HTC One, Samsung Note 3 and Samsung Galaxy III S, and the Moto G 3G smartphone that went on sale at the carrier’s Boost Mobile no-contract service earlier this year with a $129 price and $55 monthly fee that carries a 2.5 GB data cap. About 1,600 radio stations have added HD2/HD3 channels, and 10-12 also have HD4, the first of which launched in 2009 on CBS Radio’s WJFK(FM) Manassas, Va., serving the Washington market.
"The phones are more complicated in the U.S., because you have to follow the analog broadcasters, where the core issue is there are no FM chips on the phone or there are but they aren’t turned on,” Struble said last week. “Different listening patterns” could lead HD Radio to be introduced first in smartphones in international markets, Struble said. “There is a pretty good uptake, user experience and revisits” among Sprint customers with the FM service, “so ours is a little bit longer play given the state of basic analog radio in phones,” Struble said. “When we first went in to the handset guys and carriers” about building HD Radio into smartphones, “they looked at us funny because they didn’t have analog radio in there yet,” Struble said. “It’s a two-step hop and the broadcasters are working hard to accomplish the first one and then we will come in right behind.”