Visual radio: The next wave

With over 700 stations spanning across the country and mobile penetration on the rise, FM players are now reaching out to listeners via the visual radio route too.

Radio station Radio Mirchi took the leap last year and launched the visual radio service at its Delhi station, in collaboration with Nokia and Hewlett Packard (HP).

Currently, visual radio (via Radio Mirchi) is operational in Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata, and it has plans to roll-out the service at its Bangalore and Pune stations as well.

"Radio Mirchi's primary objective of offering Visual Radio is to provide a far richer and more interactive listening experience," said CEO of Radio Mirchi, A P Parigi.

Listeners pay only for the data service carried via General Packet Radio Service (GPRS). The average rate is Rs 2 per hour (10 paise per 10 KB data download). Radio Mirchi claims the interactive features of the service receive a response rate of as high as 70 per cent.

Radio entertainment is pegged to be a Rs 650 crore market in 2007 and is estimated to grow to Rs 1,700 crore by 2011, according to the latest FICCI-PwC report. India is the third country in the world to have a commercial visual radio service. But, other FM stations have their apprehensions.

Reasons Sajjad Chunawala, station head, Fever 104: "There is a niche audience for such a service since visual radio is not very engaging. Also, it cannot be monetised from an advertiser's point of view."

He added Fever 104 may consider launching the service within two years or so if the visual radio service penetration rises.

Radio City's CEO Apurva Purohit corroborates: "Unless the service is further enhanced, visual radio might not find many takers." However, Radio Mirchi's Parigi is quite optimistic.

He says: "Radio Mirchi alone will have a penetration across 32 key cities of the country over the next 90 days and a potential coverage. Besides the mobile subscriber base in this country is around 158 million "� with both these factors, the potential of visual radio, with Mirchi alone, is huge."

According to industry experts, the service can be enhanced along three dimensions: richer information, social networking community and gaming zone. The social networking community where people would then interact through the visual radio service.

On the gaming zone, Parigi says, "A number of contests already run on the service. We are looking at developing a gaming platform on the service somewhat akin to games played via the internet. However as of now, this is at the early stages of development."

"With rich content (from the radio space) and the technological edge that mobile telephony provides, there is no reason why a service that combines the best feature offerings of both should not be the next big thing on the consumer entertainment horizon," concludes Parigi.

DEMYSTIFYING VISUAL RADIO

Visual radio is a service that combines two key personal entertainment options for consumers today "� private FM and the mobile phone. With a radio built into your mobile device, you can listen to any FM station you like.

Visual radio shows you what is playing on your phone's screen. On Visual radio, you can see information on the song currently playing, biographies or pictures of the artist, or you can e.g. immediately download a ringtone of the song that is playing.

While listening to a Visual radio-enabled FM channel, you can switch the interactive Visual radio service on or off whenever you want to.

In between, you can enjoy the plain FM radio broadcast just like with any radio station. This also means you use mobile data only when you choose to. Nokia handsets like 7710, 3230, 6230 and N90 series have the visual radio client installed while HP provides the visual radio server.