Sirius Backstage member manuelpl posted today on Backstage 2 links to the first Sirius universal boombox. Yes, that’s right, there are new receivers coming up that will also fit this bad boy.

The pic was found by manuelpl on gopremco.com.

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SIRIUS Satellite Radio today announced that it plans to release second quarter 2006 financial and operating results on Tuesday, August 1, 2006.

SIRIUS also plans to hold a conference call at 8:00 am ET to discuss these results. Investors, the financial community and the press can listen to the conference call via the company’s website, www.sirius.com, and on its satellite radio service by tuning to SIRIUS channel 125. A replay of the call will be available on the company’s website.

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Former spokesperson for the RIAA, Ms. Rosen now leads a consulting group whose clients include XM. In this interview with Wired magazine, she talks about DRM and how recording rights ought to apply to SDARS services like XM and Sirius. She makes references to Sirius including this part in regards to the earlier announced settlement:

“There’s been a lot of bad information reported about this, both on what the device does and the business choices XM has made. People have said, well Sirius chose to pay additional monies for their devices but XM didn’t. That’s not true. XM did offer to pay additional monies, in fact, at greater levels than what Sirius is paying, but the record companies, I think, were just looking for a lawsuit on this one because they’re hesitant about these devices going forward.”

I thought it was interesting from a wider angle of music-lovers, but also applicable to SDARS fans (like us).

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XM and Sirius both released their second quarter subscriber numbers, with lots of cheer from Sirius crowd, and much dismay from the XM side. At just under 1m subs from both companies, split approx. 60/40 Sirius/XM, it became the third quarter in a row where Sirius posted strong numbers. But, the short term gains may not be great for the long-term outlook of the industry.

2nd Quarter was the first quarter where the total new subscribers was less than the new subscribers from the year before. While the numbers were fairly even(1.00 vs. 1.01 million), there has been no previous quarters that were flat for the industry year over year.

This also marks the first time second quarter additions has been less than first quarter’s. Previously, there were fairly big(20-50% increase) gains from 1st quarter to 2nd industry-wide.

Sirius has consistently been about 1 year behind XM in many regards, including:

-Stock increases/decreases
-General subscriber trends
-OEM commitment
-Revenue from advertising

Could XM’s decreasing subscriber adds signify a slowdown for Sirius in 2007? The number of new reasons to come to Sirius has been dwindling quickly. NASCAR comes in 2007, but that is one of the last major content additions for several years, when Rush Limbaugh becomes available in 2010. Many of the other recent additions either will not bring many people(The Catholic Channel, Candace Bushnall, etc.) or they are intended for subscriber retention through improved content(Barbara Walters, Wimbledon, etc.). HM, providing about 25% more bandwidth, will come along late next year, but that will likely be reserved for several channels of video.

Video, released by the end of 2007, may be Sirius’ saving grace. But what will it be used for? Children’s programming will help the OEM side, but retail will stay soft. If it is used for ESPN and other channels, then it will add to the retail slightly, but people will likely have to pay extra to get it, along with plopping down serious money for a radio with a full color screen, which many won’t do.

Hopefully, this is a one-off quarter from a lack of effective advertising, and the third quarter will be stronger. 4th quarter won’t have much change over last year simply due to Stern’s presence last holiday season. We are looking for at least another 1 million between the two companies in third quarter in order to surpass last year’s quarter. If Sirius and XM add a combined 1.1 million, then we do not need to worry about slowing growth - for now.

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Orbitcast.com has the story…

Just over a month ago we learned that Wistron NeWeb (WNC) will most likely be the manufacturer behind the upcoming Stiletto Satellite Radio/MP3 Player. The date - the 2nd half of 2006.

Well, lo-and-behold, it turns out that Humax has something up their sleeve as well. Humax, the Korean firm behind the Sirius S50, is expecting to have a “new model” starting in the 3rd quarter of 2006, according to this report (PDF).

Here’s the snippet:
Humax started the satellite radio business in 4Q05 when it supplied its S50 model to Sirius, the North American satellite radio operator. Thanks to growing demand and increasing Sirius subscribers, the business posted moderate earnings results. However, the S50 was a high-end product focused on design and specialties and thus failed to meet customer needs. Accordingly, 1Q06 sales growth was negative and we expect stagnant sales and dwindling inventory levels in 2Q06. The company is to supply Sirius with a new model starting in 3Q06.

Full Article

Just to clarify, this a seperate unit from the “Stiletto.”

The question is will this player be plaqued with the problems of the S50? For those who experienced the issues this player could be a hard sell (to those who actually know humax made the S50 anyways). You can bet this moderator will be waiting for some reviews on this puppy.

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SIRIUS Music, a streaming service available on the Sprint Nextel wireless network, is one of the Top 5 most popular mobile applications according to a new study from Telephia.

Music applications Music Choice and Sirius Music each garnered 4.8 percent of the total revenue share to round out the top five, said Telephia.

The study shows that about one-third of first-time purchase revenues came from entertainment applications, particularly streaming music applications.

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SIRIUS added just over 600k net subs(600,460) in Q2, for a total sub count of 4,678,207. This means over 60% of the satellite radio market went to Sirius, in terms of net subs, compared to XM’s 398,000 sub adds that they announced earlier this morning.

This brings the new marketshare counts to approximately 40.2% for Sirius, and marks the third quarter in a row that they have beaten XM at sub numbers.

Comment here.

Satellite Standard Group aka SSG today spotted a new Sirius unit, neither SSG or Backstage are sure if this will be a real unit or simply a concept drawing. Nothing is known about this unit as far as release date and features (except the obvious) are concerned .

SSG’s article.

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