Sirius Confirms iPod Satellite Talks

An anonymous reader writes "Remember those iPod Satellite rumors last December? Mel Karmazin, the CEO of Sirius Satellite Radio, announced at the 2005 Media Summit that he had discussions with Steve Jobs about the possibility of putting Sirius' technology in future iPods. Steve's response? Not interested."

Comments

Re:iTunes Says Moo

[Moofie]

Being an MP3 player will also allow users to use iPod without purchasing anything more than Apple. What's your point?

Huh?

[mrseigen]

I'm not up on the tech, but aren't satellite radios fairly big, and requiring a high-power aerial? We don't have them in Canada, but I saw a couple of XM units when I visited the States and they didn't look iPod-sized.

Why bother?

[sploo22]

Why should I bother with satellite radio anyway? I can just subscribe to a few podcasts, maybe download a few extra tracks from the artists' sites once in a while and I have plenty of music to keep me busy, given how much I use my iPod. Plus I get that warm fuzzy feeling of being RIAA-free.

Re:Why bother?

[agentkhaki]

You probably shouldn't. Nor should anyone else with a nice, fast internet connection. Between the iTunes/Napster/Walmart music stores, and the absolutely wonderful Internet Archive, you should be all set.

Now, for those of us who don't have high-speed internet access (due to availability reasons, at least on my part), having what really amounts to an unlimited amount of music/talk/sports/etc. available at the touch of a button is well worth the $10 or less per month XM costs me.

Sirius sucks

[supabeast!]

Somehow I get the feeling that Steve would have been more positive about this if XM had been knocking on his door and not Sirius. The biggest problem with Sirius is that is has a terrible signal -- on my last two vacations we rented cars with Sirius systems, and were regularly frustrated by not getting a signal when driving in forests, under light cloud cover, fog around the San Francisco bay, or clear skys in Napa Valley. XM radio on the other hand, has an excellent signal - I have used it inside of brick buildings with no trouble.

The only thing Sirius has going for it is Howard Stern, who won't be on for a few years yet. They had better launch a decent satellite first, or all he'll talk about for the length of his contract is how much Sirius sucks.

Re:Sirius sucks

[Mr2001]

Does anyone know why they would do something so stupid as having sattelites in LEO and not geo-stationary?

Because it's not really stupid. ;)

Thanks to those elliptical orbits, Sirius usually has a satellite visible at a higher angle in the sky than XM. That means better reception and less need for ground repeaters in light urban areas.

It also means you're more likely to be able to see two satellites at once, which is how the buffering works.

Ever drive under a bridge while listening to Sirius and notice the music not stop? That's because one satellite is on a 4 second delay, so your tuner fills its buffer with one stream and plays the other. If the signal is interrupted, you can still listen to the buffered data until you reacquire the signal. But with satellites at fixed lower angles, you're more likely to lose the signal from one of them, making buffering impossible.

First things first

[NoData]

Satellite shmatellite. How about a damn FM tuner and recording to step up to the feature set of every other high end MP3 player?

Re:First things first

[NoData]

No cynic like an anonymous cynic, but here goes.

1) My gym has TVs in front of treadmills with FM broadcast of the audio portion. I'd like to run while I watch. Also, listening to NPR while I walk across campus wouldn't be bad from time to time.

2) While I don't need or use it, using mp3 players as audio recorders for lectures, concerts, note taking is an extremely popular feature.

And, yeah, the kids like their clear channel crap and recording the same from radio and friend's CDs. And while these uses may be too pedestrian for you, it doesn't mean there aren't better ones, and that all of them would sell more ipods and bring them in line with what a personal media device ought to do.

Re:First things first

[MtViewGuy]

Actually, I want Apple to offer the following on future iPods:

1. A user-replaceable battery. After all, if digital still camera manufacturers can offer user-replaceable NiMH and Li-Ion batteries....

2. A built-in tuner for local FM and AM stations. There are people out there that want to listen to local radio stations on long walks (like me every morning!) in addition to listening to music.

What I'd prefer anyway is PodCasting via iTunes

[garagekubrick]

Make my iPod like TiVo... There's a radio show I like in L.A. called Morning Comes Eclectic on KCRW. I'd pay a small fee to every morning sync my iPod on the way out the door to download the entire program from the morning and have it last for say, five days before expiring. People can get commercial free the radio programs they want directly in the genre they wish without fiddling.

Apple would do well to look at PodCasting and figure out how to bring large name radio broadcasts such as this (or say NPR's This American Life) to the iPod.

As a Sirius subscriber, what I REALLY want is...

[kilonad]

As a Sirius subscriber, what I REALLY want is a Sirius unit for my car that also plays MP3s. Think satellite radio unit with built-in iPod, not the other way around. That way, when there's nothing good on (which happens from time to time) or I want to listen to something specific, I could have thousands (or at least hundreds) of MP3s at my disposal. Of course, I'd also like a receiver that's much closer in size to the iPod, and isn't hot enough to fry an egg. Sirius, are you listening?

Not Suprised

[MBCook]

I'm not suprised at all. Let's look at the reasons why:

• Size - The iPod is small. While the Delphi portable XM radio is not big, it's much bigger than an iPod. So you'd have to make the iPod bigger (or at least much thicker) do it it.
• Demand - People are having hard times finding iPod Shuffles because they are very hard to keep in stock. The "old" iPods are still selling like hotcakes too. Apple doesn't need the help/feature to sell iPods, they are doing fine now.
• Demand 2 - How many people are actually demanding one of these things? First to use it (or at least the main feature that differentiantes it from a normal iPod) you have to pay a monthly fee. And to record the Sirrius content (assuming they allow that which would be a major reason to get one) you'd either have to keep it running (battery would die fast) or keep it plugged into the wall (so it could only record things when sitting in it's cradle at night for example). You want it to record a program that comes on at 2:00 PM? Better find a cradle you can stick it in (that has an antenna setup) so it can record it.
• Battery - As already mentioned, having that radio in there would use battery. And to have it record live radio so you can pause it (like the Delphi unit does) you have to run the audio electionics, the satellite radio electronics, and the hard drive. That has GOT to be a battery drain.
• Complexity - Not only is that a lot of stuff to put into a small box, but the interface would probably suffer too. Navigating radio stations wouldn't be too hard, but how do you make it so you can easily schedule recordings and such? I think it would be hard to make that as clean as the rest of the iPod UI while making it integrate well.
• Why Sirrius? - If the satellite iPod is such a hot product (I admit it sounds intereting), why should they use Sirrius? Isn't XM doing better? And either way, I'm sure XM would KILL to get that deal too, so why not play them both off of eachother for a while to get better terms? You don't have to accept the first formal offer. Heck, Apple probably has enough clout that they could make BOTH a Sirrius iPod and an XM iPod (none of those "you can't work with out compeditor" contracts) because the idea is supposedly so lucrative.
• Sirrius and XM to merge - As long as you are talking about rumors, there was that rumor that the two would merge and then where would Apple be? They might want to hold off because of that speculation.
• New Products - Last is the iPod line. We got the Mini a year ago, 4th gens not too long ago, with the iPod Photo about the same time. We got the iPod Shuffle last month. I'd think they'd want to wait a year before introducing anything more than an evolution (like 2nd gen to 3rd gen).

I'm not saying it's not a good idea, but I think it is definatly too early. It will be a while before we see such a thing. I don't see how it could happen right now. Just doesn't seem to make sense.

Jobs = Smart Man

[buddha42]

1.) adding a radio (fm or xm) gives a user a reason to not buy more through itunes. I can't remember the last time I loaded new mp3s onto my iRiver, to me its portable NPR + harddrive.

2.) the size of the unit would be really big to accomidate the extra electronics and most importantly the much larger battery.

I'm sure Jobs knows, like we all do, that eventually the ipod will have to go there. But for now he can reap the design benefits of the smaller battery and the revenue stream of itunes for a year or two until miniturization runs its course.

Re:MyFi complaints

[UserChrisCanter4]

Eh, I wasn't hinting at pollution here. I think a satellite-enhanced iPod would be great, provided it worked. Thing is, that's a big "if."

I disagree with your statements, though.

The Mini was the fastest-selling product in Apple's history. While you (and I) may disagree with the price/capacity point, it's obvious that a lot of consumers did not. I learned long ago that in most cases, Apple knows what people want far better than I.

The U2 edition is a limited edition. The $50 does get you a different case, but it also gets you a credit toward the U2 uber-Box set on iTunes. I've never even seen one in a store (although I guess Apple stores probably have one). It seems more like the kind of thing that a U2 fan would actively seek out. It's there, it's $50 more, you're welcome to buy it if you want.

The iPod photo is an asinine product, IMHO, but see above. Apple usually knows people better than I do. I could see buying the $599 model to get the 60GB drive, though.

Apple probably won't do a $199 shuffle. What they will do is the same thing they've been doing with the iPod since day one: Same price, bigger capacity. The $99 price point would get you 1GB, the $149, 2GB. Oh, yeah, and the iPod mini would probably bump to 6 or 8GB as hard drive capacity marches right along. We won't even get into the fact that the mini has many things consumers want (screen, colors, etc.) Again, see above: Apple knows what people want better than I do.

Apple Lies re: song profit margins

[Anonymous Coward]

Having worked for one of the iTMS competitors, I know what rate we were getting per song from most labels, and it was a greater profit margin than most retail products (40% or so).
200 million songs? Apple likely raked in a cool 80 mill...
Now, if you take into account the oodles of cash they're dumping into iTMS marketing and iPod marketing (who knows which wallet the advertising dollars are coming from ; if they're using iTMS revenue to fund iPod marketing, then, sure).. but the margin in and of itself is -not- slim...

Re:iPod Satellite Radio

[Johnny Mnemonic]

Satellite radio has limited appeal. I don't know many people that are excited about the idea of radio you have to pay for, commercials or not. Digital Radio (Digital FM & AM) will offer CD quality broadcasts in the near future effectively killing the satellite Radio market.

Now I'm just dependant on friends to introduce me to new music. I think they have better taste then the DJ's and what the big labels want to shove down my though any way.

The point of satellite radio is not it's quality. At least, that's what I've been led to believe. The point of sat radio is that the spectrum is so broad that they can carry many more different channels than are commercially viable in the AM/FM market. One of the biggest pushes of sat radio is the variety of choices now available; you only have to listen to Clear Channel crap if you want to, whereas AM/FM it's harder to find a station that's not CC.

That said, I don't have sat. radio either. But if I were more interested in music I would; it's becoming the refuge of "not mainstream" music genres.

Bad, bad move...

[__aaaqtn3397]

I was confronted with this EXACT same situation in my head this Christmas. My folks went out on a limb and, between the iPod and the MyFi, got me the MyFi. Oh, god, how I wish I could download songs onto it... I wished for an iPod after seeing the sparse techno music collection on the XM techno stations (massive amounts of repeated songs), and the mesh of the two would have sold me like no other. Heck, that'd be #1 on my wish list hands down, before car repairs or anything. Why? Because my MyFi has in-car capabilities, and listening to the radio, my recorded songs from the radio, and my own downloaded songs would have been... Well, *DROOL*......

Integrating Satelite radio a bad idea.

[aristotle-dude]

Why? Because the iPod is an internationally available product. What good with this "feature" do for the rest of us outside of the USA?

Why don't you stop thinking locally and think globally? The reason why Apple is doing so well is precisely because they are thinking globally. Consider that there is no "Japanese" version or "Chinese" version of OS X but rather OS X supports strong localization support.

Even if I was living in the US, why would I care about satellite radio when I don't even listen to regular radio?

Leave it to companies like MSFT and their partners to create different products for different markets.

Re:iTMS profit is low for now

[Anonymous Coward]

Except for their profit margins were low also right after the opening of iTMS. They had no competition then.

Really most of the money is going of course to the fucking RIAA. How much work they put into "publishing" this is an entire different question.

What I would find interesting is if Steve opens a publishing house for independent artists that will apear only on iTMS.

Re:iTunes Says Moo

[Moofie]

I think the more logical reason is the same reason they don't include an FM broadcaster in the iPod: It wouldn't work very well.

I'm glad Apple concentrated on making the iPod user experience so bulletproof, even at the expense of gee-whiz features.

I also think that Apple didn't want to back the wrong horse, and it's not clear which sat radio company is going to buy the other one...