And then there was one...

Recall last week’s rumor about Microsoft halting future development on its Zune HD portable music player?  Well, Radio Survivor’s Paul Riismandel found a wrinkle in the story that I hadn’t noticed:

Conceived as a competitor to Apple’s market-dominating iPod line, the Zune added an HD Radio receiver in 2009, making it one of only two portable HD radios available.  The other comes from the Best Buy Insignia house brand, which has a touch-screen making it look like an MP3 player, even though it’s only a radio.

It appears that Microsoft will retain the Zune brand which includes a music store platform accessible on the XBox games system and Windows smartphones. But none of those devices includes HD Radio reception.

So should the Zune HD disappear (likely, as the series hasn’t received a hardware update since 2009), that will leave precisely one portable HD receiver on the market.  Not exactly indicative of any overwhelming demand for the service.

A couple of months back I asked a manager of one of the local public radio stations (one which runs two multicast channels, as well as its main HD-1 service) if he had any idea how many HD receivers - of any type - were actually in use by real listeners in our market.

His answer: “More than nine.”


Previously:

Posted by: Old Grouch in Radio at 17:05:04 GMT | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 263 words, total size 4 kb.