HD Radio in Smartphones Still Possible This Year, iBiquity Says

Though roughly only 90 days are left in the year, iBiquity’s goal of landing HD Radio functionality in at least one portable device before the end of 2012 hasn’t changed since the company first declared that goal five months ago, immediately following the NAB Show (CED May 1 p2) OR (CD May 1 p3), Jury said. Still, “as we look at this and get into it more, we also understand there’s a continual need for us to show the value of radio, show how dynamic radio can be,” he said. “And so we're spending our time working with the industry not just to talk about HD Radio, but about radio in general, talk about what radio brings to the device, the consumer value. Our ultimate goal is digital radio, but we believe one path forward is also to show the value of radio overall."

Jury declined comment on recent NAB efforts to lobby the FCC to encourage voluntary inclusion of radio chips in smartphones and other mobile devices. “We're not involved” in NAB’s effort at the FCC because “our focus as a commercial business is to show the commercial value of putting radio into devices,” he said. “So we're very much focused on the business side of it, talking to tablet and handset manufacturers and carriers to show there’s a good business reason, good customer satisfaction reason, to put radio technology into the devices."

Mindful that handset makers have demanded global “scale” as a prerequisite for building digital radio into smartphones, iBiquity has started talking with broadcasters in the U.K. on launching similar services on both sides of the Atlantic, whether on HD Radio or Eureka-147 DAB, Jury said. The purpose is to assure handset manufacturers that if they put digital radio in a smartphone, “it’s not just for North America, or the feature sets we talk about won’t show up just in North America,” he said. “They'll also show up in DAB markets too. So definitely, we're still pushing and still working closely with some of our international partners on ensuring that digital radio can be a global experience. It doesn’t just have to break down along the lines of whatever digital standard is in different parts of the world."

Virtually every handset maker and carrier that iBiquity has talked to about the low-power digital radio chips Intel and others have developed for mobile devices “sees the value in doing one common hardware platform that can do either DAB or HD Radio,” Jury said. “The ability to handle global digital radio -- I think you can definitely say that is where the trend is going. That’s the most logical place to get to scale. You get the scale for the chip manufacturer, you get the scale for the handset manufacturer, and then, through software, you control the customization for whatever part of the world needs certain standards."

As for needing to demonstrate radio’s value proposition to potential handset maker customers, iBiquity has told them it thinks “there’s a natural fit” toward building HD Radio into smartphones, Jury said. However, “we don’t think it has to be radio as people thought of it in the old days, which is a dial that tunes up and down,” he said. “We can have a much more interactive apps experience,” such as to “tie in” artist and song data through a “back channel” on a smartphone or tablet to inform listeners when a particular artist is scheduled to appear in concert locally, he said.

Facts about an artist also can be linked through HD Radio in a phone or tablet to Facebook, Twitter and other social media services, Jury said. “So the idea is to show a richer experience with radio” than some may be accustomed to, he said. “Radio doesn’t just have to be music playing, where you tune up and down for stations and that’s the totality of the experience. It can be very dynamic. You can tie it together with the ability to link in IP-delivered content along with over-the-air content and create a consumer experience which is nothing like radio used to be."

Jury concedes a big challenge iBiquity faces is maintaining HD Radio’s share of mind among handset makers and wireless carriers that are being pitched on building many other technologies into smartphones. “The handset guy or tablet guy gets pitched on a myriad of new technologies and new services and all this stuff you can put in there,” he said. “And so part of what our job is to show as they're getting pitched on a hundred different features, that HD Radio is a compelling offering for the consumer. So, yeah, you have to stand out to a certain extent amongst the hundred other ideas they're getting pitched. That’s a legitimate concern they have. It’s a legitimate issue they have to deal with. They have to take all this in, think about it, and decide which makes most sense to put into a device for their customers."

Still, for iBiquity, that “process” is no different than pitching HD Radio to the automakers, Jury said. “They get pitched with a lot of different ideas, and they have to decide what to put in. If you look at the progress made where we're rolling out in cars, we've shown that there is value, that HD Radio is a compelling feature to have. And now we have to take those same steps in essence on the handset side and show that particular market segment the compelling value and why they should put it in."

Jury recalled a debate a few years back on whether Wi-Fi was needed in smartphones, he said. “Now, it makes total sense for everybody” to have Wi-Fi built into smartphones “because in some cases you're going to get your content over the cellular system and sometimes you're going to get your content through Wi-Fi,” he said. “It makes sense to have multiple pipes in the device.” Jury thinks “the logic extends” to building mobile DTV or HD Radio into a smartphone, he said. “There’s a certain logic to saying, let’s have another pipe in the device, so that you can very efficiently get that content without using a data plan or the other pipes that are used for one-to-one point-of-information delivery. Digital radio is a tremendous pipe for sending one-to-many content out. If you have 200,000 people who are listening to the same thing, it’s very efficient compared with using a point-to-point system for that.”