What concerns me is the pronounced slowdown in consumer investment in digital radio technology.
5.5 million sets sold by end 2006 6.5 million sets sold by end 2007 Oh dear, that's not a 200% increase, DAB must be stillborn. Alert! Call the police! You put forth your argument well sir :P How many sets were sold by Q4 2005? And while a difference of a million is still a difference of a million, how many of these radios were for homes already equipped for digital listening? How many *decent*, mid-range, standalone radio receivers can you buy now in most high street stores that don't come with a DAB chip in them? > Incidentally, I've bought (another) DAB set today - the Pure Siesta, a clock radio alarm. > £49, and even DAB+ upgradeable. Neat little device. Also available, but I didn't buy it, > a clock radio from Tesco own-brand Tecknicka or something similar, for £15.00. And yes, it included DAB. ... Illustrates the last two point somewhat. Plus, we can't assume that sets including DAB technology are a direct indicator of active adoption of DAB (buying a radio which includes DAB but still has FM is somewhat like adoption by stealth - not necessarily a bad thing, but again somewhat confusing statistics-wise). Not trying to 'call you out' or anything, but I note in a January article on Grauniad ( <http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jan/23/digitaltvradio.radio> http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jan/23/digitaltvradio.radio) that, The number of digital radios is up nearly 50% on the 4.4m sold by the fourth quarter of 2006. So which figure is the correct one for 2006 sales - 4.4m or 5.5m? (just curious). If I'm missing something, please point it out to me. Stark imagery such as the one in that el reg article don't serve to allay the fears of regular consumers (like me), and also the specific statistics from reports such as the Enders paper aren't available to people like me because we don't have annual subscriptions to Enders ;) Then you have GCap pulling out of DAB, the two stations closing down (including Planet Rock, sniff), and the huge irony that stations like Kerrang - broadcasting in the comparative high fidelity of stereo FM here in the Birmingham area, are only on DAB at 64kbps mono. "And I'd want to switch to DAB why, exactly?" Hazlitt's comments back in February were interesting too... "Hazlitt thinks the latter. "DAB is not an economically viable platform for us. Other radio operators may think differently and that is entirely their prerogative," she said today. "What we look at is consumers and they are saying it is not a big platform of choice for them. It does not provide an experience that is sufficiently better quality than what they have on FM." "As Hazlitt pointed out today, while nearly 10% of all radio listening is now to DAB radio, only 4% is to digital-only stations. They remain a niche interest, a niche that will shrink further with the closure of Planet Rock and TheJazz. Although, of course, I'd be remiss to not include the line "There is a danger, of course, that we mistake GCap's woes for an industry wide retreat." (Organ Grinder: <http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/organgrinder/2008/02/double_blow_for_dab_radio. html> http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/organgrinder/2008/02/double_blow_for_dab_radio.h tml) While I was on Google (ironically, in a search for 'uk digital radio takeup statistics') this 2004 article projects 2008 takeup as 28.7% - ~13million. Working it back, the February estimate of 22% takeup equates to just under 10m - 9.97m if we generously round up. I do have to wonder about the planning for DAB though; the BBC was broadcasting from 1995 but it was a few years before enthusiast-level receivers (triple digit prices) became available. Three years after the BBC's digital radio rollout was first started with 6Music, the WorldDMB decided to specify the inclusion of HE-AAC in the spec - yet, AAC had been standardised in 1997. Foresight never came into the equation? BBC R&D were testing AAC too back in the 90s, yet MP2 was still used even though it would've been early enough to adopt AAC wholesale at that point (only pissing off the early adopters) but once one your mum gets a digital radio the situation gets a lot trickier. The parents still don't have a digital radio, exactly because they know that the spec will change at some point in the future. Plus my Dad prefers Radio 4 on FM because it doesn't drop to a lower bitrate at peak time (why?!), call him an old cynic if you like. ;) What worries me is that digital radio is almost still in a state of flux; in the space of three years, an industry-changing redefinition of the DAB standard is released and it causes all sorts of headaches and potential problems for manufacturers and broadcasters. FM stereo was standardised in the early 60s and it's not really changed since, yet I still feel like my DAB receiver (my venerable Wavefinder) is nothing more than 'sandbox kit', yet I've had it for years. I think half the problem is people just can't trust hardware they buy today to work in three/four years' time, whatever the assurances given. That, I think, is the crux of the problem as (roughly) summarised by that reg article... And I'm deliberately not bringing discussion of perceived quality into this argument, although the BBC R&D quotes are rather delicious in their irony. I did look for FM receiver unit sales figures for 2006 and 2007 to compare, but couldn't find any. Perhaps because there's so many year-on-year sales, it's not worth measuring. I wonder how many mobile phones with FM receivers were sold in 2006 and 2007 compared to standalone DAB radios... Anybody know?
