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Digital Radio Growth in Emerging Markets

Regardless of consumer confidence being at its weakest point in long time, the worldwide market for digital radio experienced year-over-year growth of 85 percent between 2007 and 2008, according to the latest market study by In-Stat.

The Asia-Pacific region, primarily Korea, was the main driver of the growth seen over this time period. However, a market shift is on the way.

"Moving into 2009, developed economies are significantly impacted by the economic turndown. However, developing parts of Asia/Pacific are still experiencing growth in digital radio shipments." says Stephanie Ethier, In-Stat analyst.

The reality of the math is that even modest adoption in heavily populous countries such as China and India drives a large impact in global shipments.

In-Stat's market study found the following:

- Worldwide, the market for both satellite and terrestrial digital radio, combined, will grow to over 55 million unit shipments in 2012.

- Key suppliers of semiconductor digital radio integrated circuits (ICs) for this market include Frontier Silicon, NXP, ST Microelectronics and Texas Instruments.

- A variety of digital radio broadcast standards are being deployed, largely on a geographic basis. Among these include iBiquity's IBOC technology, Eureka 147 (also referred to as digital audio broadcasting (DAB)), terrestrial integrated services digital broadcasting (ISDB-T), Satellite digital audio radio services (S-DARS), and Digital multimedia broadcasting (DMB).

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