Will Cell Phones Be The Real Radio/iPod Killer?

Since a lot of us don’t have a print subscription to FMQB (and aren’t really sure we need one anymore), you may have missed an interesting analysis on the future of radio by consultant John Silliman Dodge. So we appreciated it when those nice folk at RAIN (The Radio Internet Newsletter) excerpted potions of it in their newsletter Monday.

"If you thought iPods or Sirius or XM was a threat to radio, watch out for the cell phone. Last summer the Wall Street Journal reported that despite the success of the iPod/iTunes industry, ‘… mobile-phone makers will sell more than 750 million handsets. With the rollout of full-track music download services…the wireless phone could become the music industry’s biggest and most profitable distribution channel…."Sprint Nextel is now in the radio business, working with Sirius. Cingular is in. Virgin is in…, Motorola has iRadio with 435 channels from Clear Channel; Nokia is getting in, CBS Radio is working with Hewlett-Packard on a "visual radio” concept…" music/talk /personality/ relationship/package that makes
"…The radio business needs to focus on the total package, to craft the completely branded us more compelling than any program-it yourself entertainment option. And now would be a particularly good time to do this work, now that the music, telecom, software and banking industries all plan to make cell phones their new one-stop delivery and payment channel."