May 28th, 2009
Sirius aims to go viral with iPhone, social networking as automakers unravel
Sirius XM showed a sneak peak of its iPhone app at its annual shareholder meeting and riffed a bit on social networking as the company pivots its strategy to gain subscribers via viral means. It’s unclear whether the iPhone and social networking can offset declining auto sales (not to mention automakers).
The Sirius XM screenshot of its iPhone app, which will apparently be available on other smartphones too, got the play (Techmeme, SEC filing).
But Sirius XM also talked about using social media better—even though evidence is lacking that there’s much of a strategy today.
There was also a move to compare Sirius XM to Internet radio. On the traditional radio front, Sirius XM is the largest radio company.
The message: Sirius XM is increasingly pitching itself as a content company that’s platform agnostic even though it still relies on auto sales for most of its subscribers.
The good news: Sirius XM comes with almost every car sold. The bad news: Folks aren’t buying cars. More bad news: Chrysler and GM are going into bankruptcy.
It will be an interesting experiment to see whether Sirius XM can offset the declining auto industry with some viral mojo courtesy of the iPhone and social networking.
Also see: Sirius XM: We’re developing an iPhone app for second quarter launch
Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and Editorial Director of ZDNet sister site TechRepublic. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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