The Blackberry Bold 9700 & Blackberry 9000 Review

Could FM Radio be coming to the Blackberry?

According to Ars Technica, a blogger :

Music labels and radio broadcasters can’t agree on much, including whether radio should be forced to turn over hundreds of millions of dollars a year to pay for the music it plays. But the two sides can agree on this: Congress should mandate that FM radio receivers be built into cell phones, PDAs, and other portable electronics.

This means it’s quite possible that if congress does approve such a move, Blackberries and other devices would be forced into putting an FM receiver on every device.

While I think that would be an exciting move, it would still not knock out the market for streaming online media services, podcasts and other such features. It would, however create an entirely new antennagate issue. With platforms like Android, iPhone4 and Blackberry Torch already on the market, such a move would take until mid 2012 or longer to see any kind of widespread adoption.

“As regards the chip, this is a key issue for the radio industry,” musicFIRST told Ars today. “musicFIRST, too, likes FM chips in cell phones, PDAs, etc. It gives consumers access to more music choices.”

The Consumer Electronics Association said: “We would argue that having radio capability on cell phones and other mobile devices would be a great thing, particularly from a public safety perspective. There are few if any technologies that match the reliability of broadcast radio in terms of getting lifeline information to the masses.”