A few months ago, my wife started a job that entails a monster commute across the NYC metro area. She spends a lot of time in the car, so as an anniversary present I got her XM radio to make the driving time a little more bearable. She seems to like it.
A few days after installing it, I was bragging about the device a little with my in-laws in Bombay. In the midst of my laborious explanation of how it works, they stopped me and said ‘hey, what’s the big deal? We already have one of those at home.’ Oops. In some spaces, the Indian market for consumer goods is actually a bit ahead of the western one. Satellite radio turns out to be one such space (the other space where that is true is in mobile phones).
Worldspace Satellite Radio has been around for seven years, and has had India in its service range for five of them. But it’s only this year that it has made a major push to gain subscribers in the Indian market (coinciding with a stock IPO). According to a recent Rediff report, Worldspace currently has about 40,000 customers in India, and 63,000 worldwide (compare to 4 million XM Radio subscribers and 1.1 million Sirius subscribers in the U.S.). Worldspace in fact predates American satellite radio (they originally owned XM Radio), though it seems they’ve now been eclipsed by it in terms of subscriber base. The big news this summer is that XM Radio has invested $25 million back into its parent company.
Worldspace broadcasts from two geostationary satellites, and covers an area that includes 4 billion people, including the majority of Asia (East Asia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia), the Middle East, Africa, and Southern and Western Europe. (See the full coverage map here)
The questionable business strategy and management of this particular company probably isn’t that important. More interesting is the potential of the medium as a whole: 4 billion people is a lot of potential listeners, especially considering they are being reached with just two satellites. If other companies enter the space, and put up their own satellites, the industry could explode across Asia. Among other things, it could potentially be an impressive engine for globalization: because satellite broadcasts cover huge swaths of earth on limited bandwidth, they can’t be specialized very much by region. Thus, all of South Asia gets the same broadcast. Interesting possibilities…Satellite bandwidth is very limited, so the number of channels offered generally isn’t that impressive. People in major Indian metros are not likely to be blown away by Worldspace’s Indian selections (there are about 12 South Asia oriented channels), though they might appreciate the international news and music offerings. People in smaller Indian towns — where the regular FM offerings are still a little meager — will probably be much more interested in subcscribing. (Too bad Worldspace’s recent marketing push is directed exclusively at the big metro markets…)
A major limitation to Worldspace satellite radio currently is the receiver, which is large and bulky, and not meant to be portable. Indians who buy it are probably people with big stereo systems at home. A portable unit is being developed along the lines of the Delphi MyFi (hopefully cheaper in its Indian incarnation), but until it’s released, the biggest potential part of the Indian market isn’t being served. (Update: In order for portability to be feasible, the company needs to build a network of terrestrial repeaters, which it has not yet done. So it may take a while…)
More on how Satellite Radio works here. Also see the Wikipedia entry on Satellite Radio.
amardeep writes:In some cases, the Indian market for consumer goods is actually a bit ahead of the western one.
On my last visit to India, I rented a car. To my chagrin, there was no rear-view mirror! Then I noticed that right next to the steering wheel, there was a video-screen, with three parts. There were three webcams at the rear of the car, one pointing back, the other two to the sides. He was running a wireless intranet in the car to beam the videos. So, sitting right there with no need to look up into the rear-view mirror – the video screen was at eye-level.
I asked him how much it cost – he said ~1000 rupees(~25$). This “option” is nowadays available on high-end Lexuses in the US. Cost: ~500$!!
M. Nam
I heard them in Africa in 1999-2000.
MoorNam,
Wow, I’d never heard of such a thing. Webcams? Wireless internet? Sounds like an awful lot of hardware to replace a piece of glass, which usually works perfectly well.
Also, Rs. 1000 sounds way too low, considering that a wireless router alone costs 4000-5000 Rupees. Were they using something other than a router? And don’t you need some kind of “server” to receive and process the output from the webcams?
That’s what I thought until I saw the price on the Lexus. Apparently, the rear-side(s)-view is the main reason why that’s catching up. In a few years, I expect that to see as a standard safety feature on all cars in the US.
Cost/routers: They’re not exactly using stuff from Cisco!! This is all desi-grown and put together by college kids who want to make quick money while trying cool stuff. Marketing is by word-of-mouth. Warranty etc is non-existent.
M. Nam
I’m hesitant to believe that those rearview cameras are transmitting signals to the front of the car via 802.11 – considering that it’s only 15 feet or so, it would be much cheaper/reliable to hardwire them…
On top of that, 3 LCDs or even CRTs cost more than Rs1000.
I’ve seen rearview cameras here in vehicles with limited rear visibility, such as RVs and those shuttle buses at airports. They only have one camera, though.
As of June 30th, 2005 Sirius has 1.8 Million Subscribers, instead of 1.1 Million as mentioned.
and, btw Sirius Rocks too…I have had it for over 2 months now and am having fun listening to some new rock.
Actually there is an alternative to sat radio which is more suited to the overwhelming rural population which is the Digital AM Radio Project called Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM).
“DRM is the only universal, non-proprietary digital AM radio system with near-FM quality sound available to markets worldwide.”
It has the advantage of using free to air techology and modifying rather then replacing existing transmitters and the involvement of the Mighty BBC. It also receives text. More at http://www.drm.org.
Anyway what’s the point of worldspace if you can’t listen to “In Our Time” in the heart of the motherland 🙁
A overpriced, overcomplex technological fix for something has already has perfectly good solution there’s got to be a word for that !
oops ! I mean the wireless network in the car replacement for rear mirror, not worldspace. I’ll sit in the corner and cry myself to sleep now.
I heard the worldspace radio in Kenya in 2002, and I thought it was brilliant. Some family friends were involved in a project to distribute these radios to rural villages, where one radio would be shared by the enire population of the village. There was also talk about developing programing to share new farming/irrigation techniques etc. I think, with the advent of widespread mobile phone use, they were even trying to set up live programming where people could call/text their questions in.
From what I remember, this project was based on a project in India (the parent organization of this charity (GIANTS) is based in Gujrat)
I think it’s great technology with a lot of potential, I just don’t think it’s being used to its full potential.
This is an excellent article about satellite radio because it is the future of radio technology.