Emmis Sees 2016 as ‘Breakthrough Year’ for NextRadio, CEO Says

Emmis Communications, which developed NextRadio (see 1408050056), sees 2016 as a “breakthrough year” for the FM-reception smartphone app, said CEO Jeff Smulyan on an earnings call. Having scored big NextRadio wins in 2015 with wireless carriers AT&T, T-Mobile and U.S. Cellular, “discussions with others both on the handset business and carriers are ongoing and very encouraging,” Smulyan said. Emmis also is having NextRadio talks in Australia, Canada, “all over” Latin America and Germany, and thinks NextRadio is an idea whose “time has come,” he said. Emmis thinks about 100 million smartphones globally will have “the ability to get NextRadio” by mid-2017, Smulyan said Thursday. “Remember with NextRadio, we have to do this one phone at a time,” he said. “We have to reach an agreement with the carrier,” then with the handset maker, to activate the FM chip that’s built into virtually all new smartphones, he said. “So it’s not as simple as just saying, OK, it is there, and 300 million phones get it.” But the “incredible support” NextRadio is getting “gives us hope against the background of an industry that’s frankly been challenged for the last number of years with flat to down growth,” he said of the radio business. At CES, NextRadio had “a pretty significant presence,” including staging an event with Blu, the largest supplier of unlocked phones for sale, through Amazon, Best Buy, Target and Walmart, he said. Emmis also demonstrated at CES a NextRadio automotive app with Ford, developed at the automaker’s “request,” and “we are really very excited about that,” he said. Verizon on the carrier side and Apple on the handset side remain the hardest nuts for NextRadio to crack (see 1504120004), he said, but “we are very encouraged by the conversations we are having.”