EXCERPTS FROM FULL BOOK
61. 1 December 2009 DAB radio UK sales: 10 million in 10 years is “an incredible achievement”? The Digital Radio Development Bureau [DRDB] published a press release yesterday trumpeting the “incredible achievement” that 10 million DAB receivers had been sold to date in the UK which, it said, “proves that digital radio is here to stay.”45 The press release was notable not for what it said, but for what it omitted. Ten million radios sounds like a big number until you realise that this has been achieved over more than a decade of DAB product sales in the UK. There are 51.3 million adults (aged 15+) in the UK. So, averaged over the decade, roughly one out of every fifty adults bought a DAB radio each year. Not so impressive. Revisit the DRDB’s own forecasts for DAB receiver sales. In 2004, it forecast 13.15m DAB radios would be sold by year‐end 2008 (the reality was 8.53m). In 2005, it forecast 19.96m to be sold by year‐end 2009. In 2006, it forecast 17.2m sold by year‐end 2009. In 2007, it was too embarrassed to revise its year‐end 2009 forecast (but even its year‐end 2008 forecast of 9.16m was overstated, as the reality was 8.53m).46 In 2008 and 2009, understandably, the DRDB did not publish its forecasts. The DRDB forecasts of the very consumer market in which it is specialising have consistently been shown to be wildly inaccurate. 25
CUMULATIVE UK DAB RECEIVER SALES (million at yearend)
20
15
10 8.53 6.45
5
actual 2004 DRDB forecast 2005 DRDB forecast 2006 DRDB forecast 2007 DRDB forecast
4.44 2.72 0
1.29 2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
47
The DRDB press release also claimed that “for the past three years, sales of digital radio sets have remained solid.”48 ‘Solid’ is an interesting choice of word to describe the present situation of declining sales. Sales in Q2 2009 were the lowest in two years and were down