Building HD Radio Chips Into Smartphones No Longer Emphasis at iBiquity

IBiquity’s support for NextRadio “has given us some traction globally as we launch HD Radio in other countries,” Jury said. “We are working collectively to make radio more attractive in a handset,” he said. IBiquity also is coordinating with U.K. broadcasters “to talk collectively with handset manufacturers about including digital radio” in a smartphone, he said. “If you build HD Radio into the smartphone, the chipset should be able to handle DAB radio also, so you could sell it in different countries with different digital radio standards. So I think the radio industry collectively is looking at how do we increase the attractiveness of analog and then digital radio in a handset.” NextRadio app support is in about two dozen Sprint smartphone models.

HD Radio’s push into other countries will be concentrated “across the board,” not just on automotive as it was in the U.S., Jury said. “It’s going to vary country by country. We're approved in Mexico, and that rollout will have elements of traditional radio as well as elements of automotive. We're approved in the Philippines, and there’s the potential for HD Radio in handsets there before there’s deep penetration in cars because of the nature of the market.” The company will focus first on the Americas, then “selectively in Asia and also potentially in Europe,” he said. The U.S. “is very, very car-centric in general,” he said. “But in other countries it will be pretty much across the board."

IBiquity “believes” strongly in the connected car, Jury said. All of iBiquity’s partners in Detroit agree “there are going to be all these pipes in the vehicle,” he said. “It makes sense to have 3G, it makes sense to have digital radio. It makes sense because consumers want all this different content. Either through partnerships or working it ourselves, yes we do believe that there’s this opportunity to make this a richer experience. I just talked about handsets. Let’s make radio a richer experience than it used to be. That same opportunity would exist in a dash, in a vehicle.” The company is “definitely” looking at connected car is “in terms of the broader goal of achieving a better experience for the consumer around digital radio, even if some of that content isn’t delivered directly over the air from the station.” IBiquity believes “the more you're in car, the more you're in the mind of the consumer,” Jury said.

That iBiquity didn’t score HD Radio smartphone design wins two years ago shouldn’t be marked as failure, Jury said. “The market has moved to more of an app orientation. When you talk to consumers, when you talk to product planners, they're asking, what’s the great use case for the next app? How do you tie all this functionality together as opposed to a stand-alone feature?” he said. “You're seeing across the board with anything nowadays. Everything is more app-oriented. It pulls content from different sources together. We're just tying our technology in on that."

HD Radio in tablets remains a “potential target market” for iBiquity because tablets and smartphones are different animals, Jury said. “Tablets are interesting because a lot of them don’t have the 3G connect, and they just have Wi-Fi. Again it would probably come down to the richness of that experience.”