Sirius XM iPhone Player (Almost) Ready

Yesterday, Sirius XM Radio announced a player for the iPhone was in the works. Let's take a look at why this is important. Interest in streaming content continues to grow. After a while people tend to get tired of their music libraries. There's just something about live content that's streaming. It feels "fresh". Applications like Slacker, AOL Radio and Pandora have occupied the streaming space on the iPhone over the past year. These are all worthy options, however, the content is sometimes limited, generic and often rich with boring commercials (disagree?). Sirius XM, for those that don't know, offers a subscription service with dozens of commercial free music channels mixed in with premium content with limited commercials (CNBC, CNN, etc...). Most consumers are exposed to satellite radio through their cars. Many new cars come with the radio included. One of Sirius' challenges was getting the device in the hands or cars of the consumer. While more devices are available in new cards than ever before, and Sirius expects overall growth to continue on that fact alone, conversion rates from the free trial subscription to the paid subscription run in the range of 50%. Using the iPhone as a radio device reduces the barrier to access for Sirius. The iPhone offers a device that isn't stationary and locked in your car and limited my satellite line of sight connectivity. Have a 3G connection and you're ready to go with a iPhone player. XM offered a Blackberry player, but it offered limited channels, a terrible interface and was not priced correctly. For the Sirius iPhone application to be a success it must have a great interface and the price model must be appropriate. How many iPhone users want to pay another $10 on top of their existing phone and data plan? There's a market there, but limited. I've been surprised we've not seen a player for the iPhone to date, but the announcement from yesterday along with the timing of Apple's 3.0 roadmap has me thinking there's a connection. Either that or Sirius is so cash strapped in R&D they are sitting back as long as possible to figure out the right approach to take with future mobile devices. Regardless, this is an important application for the iPhone regardless if people subscribe to Sirius or not.