Samsung and XM hop into bed with sat radio DAPs
By Ryan Block 
posted July 26th 2005 10:55AM
posted July 26th 2005 10:55AM
Well, well, then. So XM and Samsung announced a partnership to co-develop digital audio players that will be XM satellite radio enabled. The icing in the cake here comes in the form of XM's $25M investment in WorldSpace last week, which secures them satellite radio access in a few new places you might have heard of: Africa, Asia, Europe, etc. In other words, all the other markets that Samsung would really like to sell devices outside the States. Man, did Apple ever miss the boat on this one—think Jobs is on the phone with Karmazin right rocking it supplicant style?
i think sj will be happy counting all the ipods and songs from the itms sold. apple probably thought, and i agree, that xm could undermine the itms.
i'd love to see a sirius/apple connection, apple has good hardware and sirius has good content. sounds like a good connection to me.
true portable satellite radio kits already exist. you might have seen them...they have the sin-ugly headphones that have the antenna up on the top of the headphone band.
xm is certainly higher in book than sirius is at the moment. xm can be accessed on internet enabled mobile devices (like my smartphone) where sirius is only available over the internet on windows laptops and desktops. for myself, streaming xm across my gprs connection is just fine and certainly works out better than trying to carry around "buffered" music or wearing those horrible antenna headphones.
does anyone have any pictures of what someone actually wearing/using one of those portable satellite radio things looks like? i've heard the stuff about people having to wear an antenna on their head, but the product pictures, etc. seem to normally leave this out (perhaps rightly so). and i haven't ever seen anyone using one in public, so i don't have a frame of reference.
smart move samsung. who will be next?
If only I didn't have to remember...
How many times have I heard a song on the radio and thought, ooo, I like that, then, either went out and bought the entire freakin' cd, cursed the dj for not telling me who it was, or kicked myself for not remembering. I mean, who wants to take the time to actually write it down? With a satellite radio enabled iPod, I would be one click away from purchasing the song for myself. That's why radio was invernted in the first place ... to promote artists wares, right? Well, among other things. With this in place, when I heard a song I liked playing on the radio, I'd click a button to earmark it. Next time I connected my iPod to my PC, it would automatically download the song right into iTunes. Viola. A new way for Apple, and the music industry to make sure they're making their money. I hope I get a commission for this idea.