AI
Sunday, December 18, 2005 7:46:15 PM
"Anyone playing with XMSR?"
Not here. But the bum rush on the < Long XMSR / Short SIRI > trade got launched again the beginning of last week. Yielded 15% divergence in 4 days.
You never know if one or the other will engineer a deal with Apple, but I tend to think Apple would never do a deal unless it was non-exclusive. Then again, I wouldn't be surprised to see them both continue on their own development paths.
They'll have a combined 10 million subscribers by next quarter, and probably double that by this time next year. Just guessing, but I bet by 2007, the subscriber base will be big enough and their progress on refining the mobile technology will have been refined enough that we see a competitive all-in-one music player. But by then digital terrestrial will be up and running. Right now Clear Channel and the terrestrial guys are ramping to run their transition to digital.
I don't think there's a great awareness what that will mean or how it will change the landscape. Sound quality will exceed satellite, but more importantly, the number of stations they can throw out on existing licenses will be an order of magnitude greater. If CCU wants to invest in programming, it can undercut the subscription models XM and Sirus rely on. For now, that seems laughable. But XM and Sirius have built their programming from scratch in basically less than 2 years. Nothing says CCU can't do the same. And if they decided to do that, it's almost a certainty they'd wind up doing it in a more fiscally sane way and wind up with a lower cost structure.
CCU and the terrestrial radio people know how to do the infrastructure buildout and presumably they can handle content expansion. What those guys don't do is receiver hardware. It's not something they've had to think about for about a zillion years. Then again, the usual embedded analog manufacturers should cover that fine - with one exception. Mobile. If I'm a strategic planner at CCU, I'm looking at Apple. Stuffing Satellite receiver capability into a portable is tough and unweildy and too damn big physically. Not so, terrestrial digital.
The innards bet would be on Texas Instruments, which has got the corner on the market for current receivers. Completely aside from the mobile side, the upgrade cycle for stationary receivers is going to be large. If for any reason CCU could cut a deal with Apple, then you got a grand slam home run.
XM and Sirius make it clear people will pay for subscription access to streamed content. I'm sure Apple understands and appreciates this and has its own strategy to unfold, but I'll be darned if I can figure out what it is yet.
Not here. But the bum rush on the < Long XMSR / Short SIRI > trade got launched again the beginning of last week. Yielded 15% divergence in 4 days.
You never know if one or the other will engineer a deal with Apple, but I tend to think Apple would never do a deal unless it was non-exclusive. Then again, I wouldn't be surprised to see them both continue on their own development paths.
They'll have a combined 10 million subscribers by next quarter, and probably double that by this time next year. Just guessing, but I bet by 2007, the subscriber base will be big enough and their progress on refining the mobile technology will have been refined enough that we see a competitive all-in-one music player. But by then digital terrestrial will be up and running. Right now Clear Channel and the terrestrial guys are ramping to run their transition to digital.
I don't think there's a great awareness what that will mean or how it will change the landscape. Sound quality will exceed satellite, but more importantly, the number of stations they can throw out on existing licenses will be an order of magnitude greater. If CCU wants to invest in programming, it can undercut the subscription models XM and Sirus rely on. For now, that seems laughable. But XM and Sirius have built their programming from scratch in basically less than 2 years. Nothing says CCU can't do the same. And if they decided to do that, it's almost a certainty they'd wind up doing it in a more fiscally sane way and wind up with a lower cost structure.
CCU and the terrestrial radio people know how to do the infrastructure buildout and presumably they can handle content expansion. What those guys don't do is receiver hardware. It's not something they've had to think about for about a zillion years. Then again, the usual embedded analog manufacturers should cover that fine - with one exception. Mobile. If I'm a strategic planner at CCU, I'm looking at Apple. Stuffing Satellite receiver capability into a portable is tough and unweildy and too damn big physically. Not so, terrestrial digital.
The innards bet would be on Texas Instruments, which has got the corner on the market for current receivers. Completely aside from the mobile side, the upgrade cycle for stationary receivers is going to be large. If for any reason CCU could cut a deal with Apple, then you got a grand slam home run.
XM and Sirius make it clear people will pay for subscription access to streamed content. I'm sure Apple understands and appreciates this and has its own strategy to unfold, but I'll be darned if I can figure out what it is yet.
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