UK Digital Radio Market Set to Double by 2005

The Digital Radio Development Bureau (DRDB) has claimed that the UK’s £45 million (€67.75 million) market is going to double by the end of the year.

There are currently 547,000 digital radios in use in the UK, and this is hoped to expand to 1 million by 2005.

Why the sudden jump? One theory is that personal stereos and portable music systems equipped with digital radios are about to hit the market, rapidly increasing the installed base. As the cost of integrating a digital tuner into consumer electronics declines, many more audio devices that featured analogue only tuners will get digital ones by default.

The DRDB is a trade body funded and supported by the BB and commercial radio operators, with a remit to ensure the swift adoption of digital radio in the UK, so you can imagine that they’re pleased at this proposed sudden spike in uptake.

The Digital Radio Development Bureau

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Fraser Lovatt

Fraser Lovatt has spent the last fifteen years working in publishing, TV and the Internet in various capacities, and believes that they will be seperate platforms for at least a while yet. His main interests at the moment are exploring where Linux is taking home entertainment and how technology is conferring technical skills on more and more people. Fraser Lovatt was born in the same year that 2001: A Space Odyssey was delighting and confusing people in the cinemas, and developed a lifelong love of technology as soon as he realised that things could be taken apart, sometimes put back together again, but mostly left in bits or made into something the original designer hadn't quite planned upon. At school he was definitely in the ZX Spectrum/Magpie/BMX camp, rather than the BBC Micro/Blue Peter/well-behaved group. This is all deeply ironic as he later went on to spend nine years working at the BBC. After a few years of working as a bookseller in Scotland, ("Back when it was actually a skilled profession" he'll tell anyone still listening), he moved to England for reasons he can't quite explain adequately to himself. After a couple of publishing jobs punctuated by sporadic bursts of travelling and photography came the aforementioned nine years at the BBC where he specialised in internet technologies and video. These days his primary interests are Java, Linux, videogames and pies - and if they're not candidates for convergence, then what is?