[opendtv] News: Your Radio Is Calling

From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
To: OpenDTV Mail List <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 9 Jun 2004 09:31:32 -0400
Your Radio Is Calling

http://www.forbes.com/2004/06/04/cx_ah_0604radio.html

Arik Hesseldahl, 06.04.04, 3:00 PM ET

NEW YORK - Before the iPod, even before the Walkman personal stereo 
and the portable boom box, the transistor radio was one of the great 
electronic status symbols of young consumers.

  If you're of a certain age, you'll remember how the counterparts to 
today's owners of Apple Computer's. iPod music players could be 
picked out by the pocket-sized electronic box they held up to their 
ear. The first transistor radio was produced in 1954 through a joint 
venture between Texas Instruments and a company known as Industrial 
Development Engineering Associates. But a little Japanese maker 
called Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo made it a cultural phenomenon. That 
company later changed its name to Sony).

  Aside from MP3 players, the mobile phone is probably the closest 
cultural equivalent to the transistor radios of old. A visit to any 
suburban mall on a Saturday afternoon proves that. Teenagers gab on 
their phones endlessly and are never caught without them.

  That's a point not lost on Nokia the world's largest maker of mobile 
phones. One often overlooked feature on several Nokia phones is the 
ability to receive FM radio signals, many of the company's phones 
have been equipped to receive FM radio signals. Nokia reckons that 
77% its customers who use the simple radio feature tend to use it 
about once a week, and consider it important. Now the company wants 
to make the mobile phone the preferred way of listening to the radio 
and accessing related content.

  Nokia calls its scheme Visual Radio, and is slowly rolling out the 
service with help from Hewlett-Packard. HP will promote and sell the 
service to radio broadcasters, and will host the Visual Radio service 
on its servers.

  Stations that deploy the service will send out the song's title and 
artist information. While the music is playing, on-screen buttons 
will let users buy the song as a ring tone. Stations may also offer 
listener polls, surveys and quiz contests, and promote concerts or 
other events. Listening to radio broadcasts via cell phone will be 
free, but there may be a charge for some of the related content, 
which will be displayed only on a new series of phones.

  "Nokia has had this feature in its handsets for a few years," says 
Reidar Wasenius, who leads the Visual Radio project for Nokia. 
"Essentially we've just been replacing a very simple FM radio. Now 
we're adding new services that go with that."

  The song title, polls and quizzes will be transmitted to phones 
using General Packet Radio Service, or GPRS, the wireless data 
technology used by such carriers in the U.S. as Deutsche Telekom's 
,T-Mobile and Cingular Wireless, the joint venture of SBC and 
BellSouth , as well as AT&T Wireless and practically all wireless 
carriers in Europe.

  Wireless carriers, always looking for a way to boost their 
customers' wireless data usage, will probably love it. The trick will 
be getting consumers accustomed to free radio to buy the related 
content--if stations elect to charge for it--and to upgrade their 
handsets to view it.

  The first radio station to use the Visual Radio technology is 
KISS-FM in Helsinki, Finland. Nokia expects the service to start 
reaching other markets early next year. Service launches will 
coincide with the rollout of Nokia handsets that support it. The 
first phone to support it will be the Nokia 7700, which looks more 
like a mutated Game Boy than a phone. Eventually Nokia plans to share 
the technology with other handset manufacturers.

  Transistor radios gave teenagers of the late 1950s and early 1960s a 
way to listen to the music their parents abhorred in 
privacy--ushering in a gadget revolution. With so many ways to listen 
to music now, radio cell phones may only be an evolutionary change. 
But for wireless operators, every extra call is music to their ears.


 
 
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[opendtv] News: Your Radio Is Calling

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