Petteri Pyyny
10 May 2001 13:50
Akoo, developer of a system which allows users to use their portable players to transmit the audio to their car stereos, and PenguinRadio, a company which has developed "stand-alone" streaming media receivers and also wireless streaming solutions, are about to combine their products into a "Internet car radio".
Basically how it sounds (for me, can't say for sure) is that they're going to use your GRPS (or similiar speed cell phone system) cell phone to receive the streaming data, plug in a module that changes the stream back to car stereo via regular AM/FM frequencies, so your stereo could easily pick up the signal.
If that's the case, it makes me to wonder why to do this in such a complicated way -- why not to release a car stereo that has cell phone's data features built in it? Anyway, this kind of development is the exact same thinking what we've been predicting for a long time; car stereos and other regular radio receivers will eventually be replaced with always-on (just like GRPS, 3G, etc...) cell phone networks and broadband wired connections.
PenguinRadio has distribution deal with Live365, world's biggest Internet radio provider, that has over 30,000 audio streams.