ONLY 150,000 HD RADIOS SOLD SO FAR

[Chuck]

No dumber, they (Ibiquity) know EXACTLY how many radios were sold months ago, NOT how many sold yesterday, or last week. Those numbers won't be in for a month or two.

By the way...it's only been a couple of months since someone was posting here "only 50,000 HD Radios SOLD". Even by you guys own silly figures, sales have tripled in just a couple o' months

Most licensing agreements I've ever heard of are based on the number of goods manufactured, not those actually sold to end users. How else could they keep track? Would they wait for the warranty cards to get returned? I don't think so.

If you are the inventor of a product, you license your technology to someone to produce it and charge according to production. If the licensee can't sell the product, it's not your problem.

 

[Ray22]

Again I doubt if over 10,000 HD radios are currently in hands of actual users. That would be the total for all the years they have been sold. Call around to retailers and find out yourself-- that most of the big pushers of HD have only sold a thousand tops. Add up the figures with the four to five big retailers that actually sell HD radios, and you come up with the sales figures that ibqiuity likes to say, "under 100,000." They could just as easy say, "under 1 million." Or, "under 10 million." geeee....

 

[NDXUFan]

I bought my HD Radio in November, 2006. I am very happy with the purchase. I live in the 'burbs of Cincinnati and I have never had a problem with FM reception. If you like HD radio, buy it. If you dislike HD radio, then do not buy it. America is full of consumer of choice in every sector. Economically, I think one problem with HD radio is that it is too expensive. It is difficult to justify that price when the alternative is so much cheaper. I used a bunch of rebates for my radio and I would not pay the market price for the radio, too expensive. Yet, as with every technology, the price is high when it is new on the market. As the technology becomes more common, prices will tank. Just my two cents.

Shark

 

[PocketRadio]

I bought my HD Radio in November, 2006. I am very happy with the purchase. I live in the 'burbs of Cincinnati and I have never had a problem with FM reception. If you like HD radio, buy it. If you dislike HD radio, then do not buy it. America is full of consumer of choice in every sector. Economically, I think one problem with HD radio is that it is too expensive. It is difficult to justify that price when the alternative is so much cheaper. I used a bunch of rebates for my radio and I would not pay the market price for the radio, too expensive. Yet, as with every technology, the price is high when it is new on the market. As the technology becomes more common, prices will tank. Just my two cents.

Shark

"Are you waiting in line for your HD radio?"

"If you lower the price enough, folks will buy the radio. That's the belief about HD radio that is being stoked in our industry. And, of course, it's wrong... Compare that with the industry's attitude about selling new radio hardware: Once the price drops below $100, they'll fly off the shelves. The more you have to drop your price, the lower the chance people value what you're selling. And the less likely you are to sell your wares at any price the maker of those wares finds appealing. No matter if you're selling HD radios or satellite radios or whatever."

http://www.hear2.com/2006/11/are_you_waiting.html

Whenever items are on-sale, the first thing I wonder is, why ? Radio Shack has put the Accurian HD back on rebate, but no doubt the radios are still sitting on the shelves - just because it is on-rebate, that is no incentive for me to run up to Radio Shack. Also, the licensing fees to iBiquity, for the HD chipsets, run from $40 to half the cost of HD radios - even if price-point was a major factor, no way will prices of HD radios ever approach that of typical $10 - $25 analog radios. Consumers are not going to compulsively buy items, just because they are on-sale, or cheap.

 

[Mike Walker]

"No doubt" they're sitting on shelves? Based upon WHAT? Cite specific sales figures FROM RADIO SHACK to back up that claim!

The Accurian is a niche product, but a very popular niche product. Since it's introduction, especially when on sale, it has been THE LEAST EXPENSIVE way to get HD radio. I know lots of people who own this radio. There's an extremely positive review of the Accurian in the latest edition of Radio World.

 

[PocketRadio]

"No doubt" they're sitting on shelves? Based upon WHAT? Cite specific sales figures FROM RADIO SHACK to back up that claim!

The Accurian is a niche product, but a very popular niche product. Since it's introduction, especially when on sale, it has been THE LEAST EXPENSIVE way to get HD radio. I know lots of people who own this radio. There's an extremely positive review of the Accurian in the latest edition of Radio World.

When I went up to out RS a few weeks ago, the salesman indicated that very few HD radios have been sold - any idiot can see why the Accurian HD is on-rebate, or why items in general are put on-sale. No one that I know owns an HD radio - maybe, some of your broadcast buddies do, but the general public has not bought into this farce. This review of three HD radios, including the Accurian, is very critical:

"HD Radio Effort Undermined by Weak Tuners in Expensive Radios"

"As I pointed out earlier, the HD radios all came with simple external antennas, essentially 9’ pieces of wire.The AM band utilized a straight length of copper while the FM band employed a T-shaped stretch. Attaching these radios to a outdoor aerial such as an old TV antenna will make a dramatic improvement in reception. Unfortunately, in the cable TV era not a lot of homes have outdoor aerials anymore. This means additional cost and effort. Most consumers who purchase one of these radios will never bother do that and, to be perfectly frank, they shouldn't have to. Early adopters of HD Radio are only getting a fraction of the stations they should. This is a big problem, because word-of-mouth on HD Radio starts with them. Already there are signs of consumer indifference to HD Radio, suggesting the early adopters are not exactly singing the virtues of the technology. When you spend a few hundred dollars for an HD radio just to get one or two HD2 stations and mediocre analog reception you quickly question the value of your purchase. Outdoor aerials will correct this issue, but at added expense and effort."

http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/7002/hd-radio2.html

Nothing like first-impressions !

 

[R.F. Burns]

"No doubt" they're sitting on shelves? Based upon WHAT? Cite specific sales figures FROM RADIO SHACK to back up that claim!

The Accurian is a niche product, but a very popular niche product. Since it's introduction, especially when on sale, it has been THE LEAST EXPENSIVE way to get HD radio. I know lots of people who own this radio. There's an extremely positive review of the Accurian in the latest edition of Radio World.

When I went up to out RS a few weeks ago, the salesman indicated that very few HD radios have been sold - any idiot can see why the Accurian HD is on-rebate, or why items in general are put on-sale. No one that I know owns an HD radio - maybe, some of your broadcast buddies do, but the general public has not bought into this farce. This review of three HD radios, including the Accurian, is very critical:

"HD Radio Effort Undermined by Weak Tuners in Expensive Radios"

"As I pointed out earlier, the HD radios all came with simple external antennas, essentially 9’ pieces of wire.The AM band utilized a straight length of copper while the FM band employed a T-shaped stretch. Attaching these radios to a outdoor aerial such as an old TV antenna will make a dramatic improvement in reception. Unfortunately, in the cable TV era not a lot of homes have outdoor aerials anymore. This means additional cost and effort. Most consumers who purchase one of these radios will never bother do that and, to be perfectly frank, they shouldn't have to. Early adopters of HD Radio are only getting a fraction of the stations they should. This is a big problem, because word-of-mouth on HD Radio starts with them. Already there are signs of consumer indifference to HD Radio, suggesting the early adopters are not exactly singing the virtues of the technology. When you spend a few hundred dollars for an HD radio just to get one or two HD2 stations and mediocre analog reception you quickly question the value of your purchase. Outdoor aerials will correct this issue, but at added expense and effort."

http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/7002/hd-radio2.html

Nothing like first-impressions !

How many HD radio stations are on the air in your part of the country and even if you are to be believed you are talking about a single store. To make the theory valid a national report from every RS store that carries the Accurian would have to be polled. By the way, you being so anti IBOC, what do you feel your constant posting of links to sites which obviously don’t want HD to succeed due to certain self interests accomplishes?

 

[PocketRadio]

I am in the Wash., D.C. metro area, with plenty of HD-FM stations - luckily, there are only a couple of HD-AM stations, but I can hear WTWP 1500 AM clobber WTRI 1520 AM with IBOC hissing. If someone is going to continue shilling HD/IBOC, then I am going to post opposing information. AM DX'ers, or those that listen to out-of-state 50KW AMs, aren't taking-a-back-seat, while HD/IBOC trashes the AM band:

http://tinyurl.com/2ccbgn

See, page-after-page-after-page !

 

[SUPERCASTER]

For the sake of argument let us temporarily suspend disbelief and accept the (probably) highly inflated number of less then 150,000 HD radios sold, thus less then 150,000 actually have even one HD radio.
Out of 300,000,000 (USA) Americans, that means less then 1 in 2000 have even one HD radio. (There are far more analog radios in the US then people - estimated over 800,000,000).
In the New York radio market of approximately 15,000,000 that proportionally means about 7,500 have HD radios. Divided equally among the 43 HD streams (now or soon) available in the NYC market, that gives us 175 HD radios per HD stream (and not all are listening all the time). Since WOR and other NYC stations were among the first to promote HD radio over 3 years ago, I would conclude HD radio has not been the roaring success claimed here.
Of course if the actual number of HD radios sold is, say 50,000 then these numbers could be proportionally lower.
Based on these rough approximations, I doubt anyone could realistically call HD radio a roaring success, in NYC or anywhere else.

 

[PocketRadio]

I talked to an iBiquity employee in Las Vegas at the NAB 2007 Convention. I will not share his name. I don't want to see anyone lose his job for being honest with a broadcaster.

He confided to me and a BE Broadcast Electronics representative that so far 150,000 HD radios have been sold in totality since 2004. However, he insisted the goal of one million sales by the end of the year is realistic.

I could try to really rub this in, but I don't need to or even want to.

Are broadcasters still ready to allow the door to close on their affordability to stream on the web? This may be a good time to join the new coalition that is forming at: www.SaveNetRadio.org

The time for action is very short.

"But is "availability" of HD radios the problem?"

"And one broadcaster reported to me that he asked an iBiquity rep how many HD radios had actually been sold as of the most recent accounting. And this was his answer: 150,000."

http://www.hear2.com/2007/04/but_is_availabi.html#comments

Hey vsa - is this a coincidence ?

 

[wgliradio]

"No doubt" they're sitting on shelves? Based upon WHAT? Cite specific sales figures FROM RADIO SHACK to back up that claim!

The Accurian is a niche product, but a very popular niche product. Since it's introduction, especially when on sale, it has been THE LEAST EXPENSIVE way to get HD radio. I know lots of people who own this radio. There's an extremely positive review of the Accurian in the latest edition of Radio World.

I would like to see a positive review of the Accurian by someone who is not an engineer or a Radio person. For the average individual, the Accurian is not practical as it is JUST a table radio.

I'm being fair here, but how many people who you know who OWN this radio are not radio groupies? Everyone I know who owns an HD radio works in radio or is a radio groupie. My Accurian needs a roof antenna and an outdoor loop for AM to even introduce HD reception on more than just the locals. What average person is going to go thru that?

This is another problem where digital tech is replacing analog where there is really no need. Here is another example. People are too obsessed with digital and don't know when to apply it and when to apply common sense.

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117963533.html?categoryid=13&cs=1&query=Digital+Storage

 

[SUPERCASTER]

wgliradio said:

People are too obsessed with digital and don't know when to apply it and when to apply common sense.

Correction.

Power hungry, greedy, moguls are obsessed with digital. Most "people" have much more common sense and much less money (only their own) to play around with, so they are very careful. Most "people" don't have access to piles of Other People's Money or "OPM" as the moguls say.

Remember Enron, Global Crossing, Tyco, Worldcom, and all the others. Moguls take the profits and leave others to take any losses. Shrewd, right?

 

[Mike Walker]

Thanks Supercaster. I never realized I was a "power hungry, greedu mogul". Sounds like a promotion to me! I hope it comes with a pay raise!

 

[clouseau]

wgliradio said:

People are too obsessed with digital and don't know when to apply it and when to apply common sense.

Correction.

Power hungry, greedy, moguls are obsessed with digital. Most "people" have much more common sense and much less money (only their own) to play around with, so they are very careful. Most "people" don't have access to piles of Other People's Money or "OPM" as the moguls say.

Oh Please. Your continued attempts to charactarize Digital ANYTHING as sinister like Enron and Workdcom are just laughable.

Digital Phone, Digital Cable, Digital Cell Phones, Digital picture quality, CD's, PDA's, Computers, Digital Clocks, Digital MP3 Players, Digital EVERYTHING. It's not about Moguls, other people's money or some other tripe you saw on an overnight wealth building Infomercial. It's much more like things must have been when they rolled out electricity.

Some things worked a lot better "WITH" the electric version like the refridgerator vs the icebox, and the Radio receiver w/ speaker vs the crystal set in the bowl, While other thngs like The Electric stove vs gas are not as good (Chefs will always tell you this.) Profit was obviously a motive along the way, but the evil moguls with OPM were there.

Remember Enron, Global Crossing, Tyco, Worldcom, and all the others. Moguls take the profits and leave others to take any losses. Shrewd, right?

Often times the best ideas go to waste because of lack of horsepower to get them to market effectively. A good example of this may very well be FMExtra. These guys have a decent product, but a few VERY SERIOUS marketing problems.
Most of them are caused by lack of horsepower. They are behind the curve and just don't have the horsepower to get in the lead. That's why IMHO, they will end up bing a great SCA alternative INSTEAD of the defacto Digital standard. I think a pretty good case can be made that they have a better system. Let's be real though. If it didn't work ALONG WITH Ibiquity's, they'd have to close their doors and go home. Or make something else.

Imagine if they had been a division of General Electric 3 years ago. With 5 styles of Receivers, Table tops and portables, and piles of money to promote it. Assuming Cam-D actually works, they'd have had enough money to buy out Leonard Kahn, make the radios (AM&FM) and get the thing out there. Things might be different now. But then I guess you'd think it was evil because it was "The Moguls".

Sheesh.

Clouseau

 

[PocketRadio]

I'm being fair here, but how many people who you know who OWN this radio are not radio groupies?

That is exactly, what the Sangean rep, Master Theasus, on another board stated - that Sangean may not produce the HDR-2 because they are afraid only radio-geeks are buying HD radios. The latest Bridge Ratings study reflects a slowdown in HD radio sales (is that an oyxmoron, or what), probably due to that fact.

 

[Mike Walker]

Uh, that ain't exactly what Master Thesus said, Dude. He ACTUALLY says sales, and interest in his products (Sangean) are brisk.

"The truth shall set you free". Guess you're doomed to a life in prison!

 

[NDXUFan]

I bought my HD Radio in November, 2006. I am very happy with the purchase. I live in the 'burbs of Cincinnati and I have never had a problem with FM reception. If you like HD radio, buy it. If you dislike HD radio, then do not buy it. America is full of consumer of choice in every sector. Economically, I think one problem with HD radio is that it is too expensive. It is difficult to justify that price when the alternative is so much cheaper. I used a bunch of rebates for my radio and I would not pay the market price for the radio, too expensive. Yet, as with every technology, the price is high when it is new on the market. As the technology becomes more common, prices will tank. Just my two cents.

Shark

"Are you waiting in line for your HD radio?"

"If you lower the price enough, folks will buy the radio. That's the belief about HD radio that is being stoked in our industry. And, of course, it's wrong... Compare that with the industry's attitude about selling new radio hardware: Once the price drops below $100, they'll fly off the shelves. The more you have to drop your price, the lower the chance people value what you're selling. And the less likely you are to sell your wares at any price the maker of those wares finds appealing. No matter if you're selling HD radios or satellite radios or whatever."

http://www.hear2.com/2006/11/are_you_waiting.html

Whenever items are on-sale, the first thing I wonder is, why ? Radio Shack has put the Accurian HD back on rebate, but no doubt the radios are still sitting on the shelves - just because it is on-rebate, that is no incentive for me to run up to Radio Shack. Also, the licensing fees to iBiquity, for the HD chipsets, run from $40 to half the cost of HD radios - even if price-point was a major factor, no way will prices of HD radios ever approach that of typical $10 - $25 analog radios. Consumers are not going to compulsively buy items, just because they are on-sale, or cheap.

Consumers will consume more at a lower price, than at a higher price, simple economics.

Shark

 

[NDXUFan]

I think we have some Luddites on this board.

http://nhs.needham.k12.ma.us/cur/Baker_00/baker_1800_soc/baker_br_rb_p4/luddites.htm

Shark

 

[radiopilot]

I think we have some Luddites on this board.

http://nhs.needham.k12.ma.us/cur/Baker_00/baker_1800_soc/baker_br_rb_p4/luddites.htm

Shark

Another no known adding comments which serve no purpose on this board...

Most of us have Ipods, computers, HDTV, electronics, broadcasters, experimentalists, engineers, scientists, etc., so you see we're not Luddites, what we see is contamination of the airwaves in the form of FCC sanctioned interference... why fix what didn't get broken?

If you went to a doctor for a simple cold, why would you need an amputation of your leg? Was it needed? Did the doctor advise you that you could live without your leg, and the reasons you didn't need your leg?

Radio was fine the way it was... if digital was the way then let satelite, internet, wifi, etc. be the way to go... the radio airwaves were better left as they were.. fix the equipment or upgrade the lousy studios and broadcast better content on the air... if you read mosts blogs and replies on this board you'll see the content is what's lacking... turning the signal into digital from analog does not change the fact that the content, commercials, etc. is what's driving radio to it's grave.

Radiopilot

 

[Mike Walker]

Actually MOST Americans don't have either HDTV or an Ipod. You think that because most of the people in the groups YOU travel in have them, it means that most PEOPLE have them. Trust me, MOST DON'T! I personally know of about three people with Ipods, and five with HDTV. Even the FCC is beginning to get concerned that people don't know about the analog shutoff date, and not enough people have the gear.

The much touted sales figure for Ipod a couple of weeks ago was WORLDWIDE. Yes it's impressive. YES Apple (by a huge margin) has the biggest chunk of the mp3 player market. But MOST PEOPLE WILL NOT BUY A NEW PORTABLE AUDIO DEVICE UNTIL THE ONE THEY HAVE DIES, or some feature is so overwhelmingly wonderful they just can't resist. I'd bet a months pay there are more 1980s boomboxes in use out there (in the US) than 2000s Ipods, and by a pretty big margin. I sure see more of 'em.