Make room for Internet radios

During one of my trips to San Po Kong, near Diamond Hill, in Hong Kong, I had the pleasure of meeting Hip Shing Electronics, who were introducing the Internet radio. I remember, my good friend, Willy Cheng, asking me to meet this company, and I'm glad that I did.

Hip Shing has focused attention on producing Internet radios. One of its models is an Internet radio with WiFi. A desktop receiver picks up the Internet radio station through WiFi and streams the music over the radio.

Do note that Internet radios and DAB radios have different markets, in the sense that Internet radios can be virtually used anywhere!

During our meeting, the executive at Hip Shing was playing for me Paris Hilton’s number "Stars Are Blind, over the Internet radio, after having accessed the audio file over the office network.

There are currently over 10,000 Internet radio stations and growing. Hip Shing’s executive said that users could stream MP3/WMA files via their own network using the Internet radio. The files buffer and then play back.

The Internet radio supports MP3/WMA/Real/AAC formats. It supports all major Internet encryption and decoding formats as well. I believe, it would be just a while when these radios come with features to support video playback. And that would be great!

Hip Shing is using Receiva’s solution for the Internet radio. The WiFi solution has been sourced from Taiwan. It is 802.11a/b/g compatible, and can stream over 6,000 Internet radio stations. Drivers for speakers are sourced from the Mainland.

The Internet radio featured five preset Internet radio stations, though Hip Shing can offer up to 10 preset stations. It had 4Wx1 speaker output power and a four-line LCD. Hip Shing was scheduled to add FM capability as well during Q1-2007.

Hip Shing was also planning to launch an Internet radio adapter and a micro system. It can be connected via WiFi. The Internet radio adapter would not have a speaker. The solution for this product has been sourced from Receiva. Hip Shing was scheduled to launch this product by end of November 2006.

Another supplier in Shatin, Hong Kong, A-Team, also came up with an Internet radio. A-Team's Internet radio also uses Receiva’s solution and plays all key audio formats. It will be sold in Europe, most likely.

I would like to see some updates from readers on this segment. I don't think this product has reached India. Would be interesting to see how it develops here.

DAB to drive digital radio adoption

This piece on DAB radios was written late last year. Am publishing it here, and look forward to updates, comments, etc.

At present, over 40 countries support digital radio. Europe is digital radio's largest market at the moment, with greatest of deployments in the UK. As of last year (2006), there were an estimated 3 million digital radio users in the UK alone and about 4 million users globally. The success of digital radio will depend on how the world will embrace the new standard of DAB (digital audio broadcasting). Consumer adoption would also entail putting up new stations that would broadcast new content unique to digital radio.

London based RadioScape, a leader in end-to-end broadcast and receiver solutions for digital radio and mobile TV, has been expanding its operations in the Asia Pacific region over the past two years. It opened an R&D center at Hong Kong Science Park in July 2006, and introduced several new products. By setting up the R&D center, it hopes to tap China (Hong Kong and Mainland) based manufacturers of digital radio, most of whom export products to Europe.

In 2006, there were 3 million units for DAB, with about 2.4 million alone in the UK. In 2007, industry forecasts place the figure at 5 million units and 6 million units, with about 3.6 million from the UK. Scandinavian markets are growing, but largest potential markets within Europe include France and Germany. These countries have largely ignored DAB, partly due to regulatory issues. Radioscape believes that Germany would be supporting DRM.

Within 2007-08, both Germany and France would likely be switching on to digital radio. These events would see digital radio's focus shift away from the UK to the rest of Europe, and trigger the economic cycle for the digital radio market.

In the rest of the world, digital radio has been making headway in North America by satellite standards such as XM and Sirius, which have about 10 million subscribers between them.

Another standard, HD Radio, developed by Ubiquity Corp, is also there. There is no question that there will be a shakeout of standards in the future. This adds another pro to Radioscape's stance of maintaining software-based modules. It does not want a hardware design tied down to a particular standard.

I would like to see some updates regarding DAB in India, and love to meet up with companies offering DAB radios for the Indian market.