Investors aren’t exactly waiting with bated breath for Sirius XM Radio’s (NASDAQ:SIRI) fourth-quarter financial report next week. Some analysts are speculating that this may even be the company’s last earnings report as a standalone entity, with many seeing Liberty Capital (NASDAQ:LCAPA), which stepped in with a loan to stave off bankruptcy not long after Sirius and XM merged in late 2008, as a likely suitor.
But Sirius XM isn’t resting on its laurels or waiting to be eaten up by a Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) or Viacom (NYSE:VIA) in order to stay alive. The company renewed its contract with radio shock-jock Howard Stern at the beginning of December, guaranteeing that its chief asset in a number of markets will keep the company relevant.
Sirius is even opening up new markets — the company received FCC approval to broadcast in Hawaii in January, marking the first time that satellite radio has come to the island.
Now it appears that Sirius will attempt to make portable devices the core of its 2011 marketing. Tech blog Engadget reported on Tuesday morning that Sirius XM has contracted Swedish software company Teleca to develop a new mobile platform based on the Google Android operating system. The new software will be built into home entertainment centers, cars, and most importantly, handheld devices.
Sirius XM already has an app available for Android phones and tablets, as well as for Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) handhelds and Research In Motion’s (NASDAQ:RIMM) BlackBerry phones, although it offers only a limited selection channels.
The new Teleca platform will not only mark Sirius XM’s first foray into the broader mobile market with devoted software — the company has its own portable radio/MP3 player, the XMp3i — but it also indicates that it will be foregoing support of non-Android devices. Engadget speculates that the new Teleca platform will be integrated into existing products like Ford’s (NYSE:F) App Link to compete with other online radio services like Pandora. Full details of the platform will be announced at the Mobile World Conference in Barcelona next week.
That Sirius is pursuing several avenues of growth is perhaps reassuring to the few shareholders who treat the stock as anything but a daytrading play, but none of these new initiatives suggest a dramatic turnaround.
Though not confirmed, a move to only support Android platforms at the exclusion of others, particularly Apple’s, seems especially foolhardy. Sirius XM needs the broadest possible reach to keep its business growing, and platform agnosticism is essential to that goal. To that end, even with broad implementation, a newsoftware platform will yield far fewer benefits over the long term than would an expansion of its existing multi-platform apps.
Rather than make a whole new platform for mobile devices and cars, why not refine and expand software options for devices that people already have, and possibly offer more options to encourage different subscription packages?
New mobile platform or not, though, Sirius XM’s long-term prospects are still fuzzy at best, bleak at worst.
As of this writing, Anthony John Agnello did not own a position in any of the stocks named here.
