Friday, February 26, 2010

A New Use for Smartphones: Radios (with Pandora app)

While I've never even used Pandora on my computer, I just read about how Pandora just became available as an app for the Android system. Apparently, it's already available for iPhones, Blackberries, and Pres (does anyone really have a Pre?) While admittedly I'm somewhat behind the technology curve as it seems most people already use Pandora on some level, I'm going to give it a try on my Blackberry. I doubt the sound will be that great, but I can probably figure out how to hook up some small external speakers that I can throw in my bag...

Pandora, which runs a popular streaming radio Web site, on Wednesday released its application for phones running the Android software from Google. It's available for download in the Android Market. Pandora is available on the iPhone, BlackBerry and Palm Pre. Of the 65,000 people who register for a Pandora account each day, 45,000 do so on mobile phones, said Tim Westergren, above, Pandora's founder. ''I'm beginning to think that our future is going to be more mobile-centric than I had even thought, and sooner,'' he said.

The biggest surprise -- and success -- of Pandora's mobile applications has been the way people plug them in to speakers in their homes and cars, Mr. Westergren said. Those two places have historically been where people listen to 80 percent of radio. ''It's giving Pandora access to the two big pieces of the radio market we've never been able to reach before,'' he said. ''It really allows us to become a much more serious and viable alternative to broadcast radio.''

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