Smartphone Score: Pandora 4 Sirius XM 0
Its been 11 months since the Apple iPhone App Store opened its doors and over a billion downloads later, there is still no sign of an official Sirius XM iPhone application. I should probably mention that the guys at Sirius XM have been saying that we should expect one “soon” which has fans everywhere asking the question… what the heck is taking so long?
As if things weren’t hard enough for fans of the Satellite Radio giant Sirius XM, yesterday they were dealt another blow when free internet radio specialists Pandora came through with a new application for the recently released Palm Pre. How is it that companies like Pandora, who by the way, had the most downloaded iPhone application of the entire year, can manage to turn out new applications in a matter of days while Sirius XM fans have had to endlessly wait?
Pandora now has a dedicated “on the go” page featuring free applications for four of the top smartphone platforms including the likes of Balckberry, iPhone, Windows mobile, and now, the only days old, Palm Pre. For those of you who might not know, the Palm Pre has only been on the market for a matter of days and already Pandora is locked, loaded, and ready to go.
The fact that the Pandora iPhone application was the most downloaded application of the entire year should be sounding off alarms in the heads of the movers and shakers at Sirius XM. There have been millions of iPhones sold and billions of applications downloaded and where was the biggest market? The audio entertainment market. What more do the people at Sirius XM need to see and how long will their loyal subscribers have to wait before they realize the importance of this new delivery system, which their fans won’t stop begging for and at the same time can put their content into the ears of millions of untapped consumers?
The merger delay was the FCC’s fault.
The Car industry’s meltdown was out of Sirius’s control.
But this? This unforgivable delay of the iphone app is all Sirius. I find it both FRUSTRATING and SUSPICIOUS that Sirius does not have one available yet. The software developers have had the software from Apple for almost a year now. The fact that Sirius did not release one by the WWDC is insane.
They are moving in SLOW MOTION when they should be kicking it into overdrive. As an investor it drives me CRAZY.
We all know how long the merger took. Longest in history. And how the delay kept the company in Limbo for 2 years. We all heard Mel say during that time how his hands were tied. We forgave him.
He signed that “ugly” deal to close the merger. We forgave him.
We stuck with him thru the whole BK scare and 40% Liberty stake.
We FORGAVE him.
But COME ON MEL!!!! All we heard him say in the last two CCs was how shareholder value was so important. And YET….he seems to be moving in slow motion while the very companies he said he competed with during the merger fiasco are now passing Sirius by.
Pandora and Slacker are kicking Sirius’s ass and management seems to be bending over asking for more. It is so friggin F’d up.
Sirius says it doesn’t have the money to advertise now. A majority of people in this country has NO IDEA sat radio even exists. There is no Hip or Cool vibe being marketed to the youth who are downloading Pandora and Slacker in the millions.
I mean WTF is going on here????
We are not just arm chair quarter back shareholders here. This is COMMON SENSE.
I have seen NO progress in marketing at all.
Sirius is blowing it. It is so absurd that it’s no wonder why some people begin to think up all sorts of conspiracy theories. It just doesn’t make sense. Is this a company that WANTS to fail???
“They aren’t even in the game…..”
So it seems—sadly.
Leave the iphone app alone for a second, because let’s face it, it would need a free Howard Stern stream to have any impact at this point.
Let’s look at the existing web stream, the one that justifies the $36.00/year rate hike. The SXM online pop-up player has a lousy interface, no search and no bells or whistles—no artwork, no extra meta information, no community, no links. Sound quality on the pay streams is great, but it’s prone to dropping the stream and crashing. The entire experience feels clunky and extremely dated. If there was any awareness or interest of behaving like a modern media company, the SXM online player would be updated with a whizzbang 2.0 model. Instead, even myspace puts SXM to shame.
They found the money for Mad Dog, so it’s not a finance issue.
The extremely sad thing is that these guys seem to be stuck in a 1980s FM mentality, but they aren’t even players in the music world. As a rock fan, I couldn’t help notice that Chickenfoot and Black Sabbath both had top ten albums recently but SXM didn’t play their music.
Down the tubes? Or ace up the sleeve. I guess waiting a few more weeks to know for sure won’t kill me.
Mel’s employment contract renewel date is coming up I think in Q3. He’ll be replaced by one of Malone’s goons. Wouldn’t it be cool to get not only SXM on the iPhone but how about DTV?
Hey, I think it would be cool if management actually talked to the outside world more than once every three months………..maybe we could start there.
I think it’s utterly outrageous that this app has not arrived yet. Hey, if they wanted to, they literally could have bought out nicemac and used their app. The ONLY explanation I can find for this ridiculous laziness is that they are waiting for OS 3.0 because of the ability to charge subscription fees from within the app. Even then, they still could have released the application by now, as most apps have already been updated for 3.0 compatibility and released. They are starting to charge $3.00 a month extra for internet useage, yet have not given an adequate means of allowing customers to access their accounts on anything besides a stationary computer, and even then through an antiquated media player. Give me a break Sirius. Give me my iPhone app already, or give me a refund.