Over the past week, we surveyed various stores to track sales trends for Sirius Radio equipments. We asked the following questions:

1. What is the average amount people spend on Sirius Radio Hardware?

2. Are sales of Sirius Radio equipment more or less this month than last month?

3. Do people buy the radio for the car or the stand alone radio?

4. Can I get activated at your store? Do most people do that?

5. How are the overall sales of Sirius Radio equipment?

• The average amount spend by customers on Sirius Radio equipment was roughly $159, compared to over $170 in previous surveys. Answers ranged most often around $150- 200 according to 29% of respondents. 41% of respondents said less than $150.

• 48% of respondents do believe sales of Sirius Radio equipment was down compared to last month. 30% believe they are up, while 22% of respondents said they were the same.

• 65% of people buy Sirius Radio equipment for use in their car while 13% buy the equipment for stand alone usage outside the car. 22% said both.

• 87% of respondents said that a customer could get activated in the store where they purchased the Sirius equipment. 9% said no.

• 50% said overall sales of Sirius equipment was increasing, while 25% thought they were decreasing.

Conclusion of Channel Check: Hardware purchases appear to be lower in July than in previous surveys. Demand appears to be slowing in July, but business also appears to have improved compared to last year. Car usage remains the primary application for Sirius equipment suggesting that overall demand may be linked more strongly to auto sales, than direct retail sales.

Over the past week, The Channel Checkers surveyed 30 Best Buy and Radio Shack stores (13 and 17 respectively) to track sales trends for satellite radio products from Sirius XM.

1. How are the overall sales Sirius radio equipment?

2. Can I get activated at your store? Do most people do that?

3. What is the average amount people spend on Sirius Radio hardware?

4. Do people buy the equipment for the car or stand alone use?

5. Are sales of Sirius Radio equipment more or less than last month?

• 60% said overall sales of Sirius equipment was decreasing, while 40% thought they were increasing. The trend appears downward as store respondents historically are overly optimistic about store trends.

• 83% of respondents said that a customer can get activated in the store where they purchase the Sirius equipment. 17% said no, which is counter to the statements provided on Sirius’ own web site - http://www.sirius.com/faqs

• $173.83 was the average amount spend by customers on Sirius Radio equipment according to our respondents. The answers ranged from a low of $30 to a high of $400.

• 70% of people buy Sirius Radio equipment for use in their car while 30% buy the equipment for stand alone usage outside the car.

• 66% of respondents do believe sales of Sirius Radio equipment is down in February compared to January. 34% believe they are up.

Conclusion of Channel Check: Sales of Sirius Radio products appear to be slowing down at Radio Shack and Best Buy locations in February. Usage in the car appears to be the dominant use of the equipment purchased at Radio Shack and Best Buy Stores. The $173 average ticket price for Sirius products does not mean much in isolation, but the trend in this figure in coming months will be revealing about Sirius hardware sales trends. We are conducting a follow up report tracking consumers purchasing trends for Sirius products.

For access to the underlying survey or for more information, please contact Jason Katz at 415.867.0959 or jason@thechannelcheckers.com

We surveyed 30 electronics stores in the past week (8 Best Buys and 22 Radio Shacks). We found that each store on average was selling 3.3 Sirius units per day, with a low of 0 per day and a high of 10 per day at one location. 73% of respondents reported that sales of Sirius units were slowing down, while 17% claimed they were increasing.

We are conducting a follow up report tracking consumers purchasing trends for Sirius to identify if intended use is for the car or home/personal use. For access to the underlying survey or for more information, please contact Jason Katz at 415.867.0959 or jason@thechannelcheckers.com

We called six Toyota dealers which makes Toyota the most heavily represented brand in our survey at 20%. Four claimed there are good deals for satellite radio in a new car while two said their were not. Out of our four positive respondents all mentioned XM. One rep told us that a Toyota Corolla comes with six months free service to XM while another Toyota rep told us that free XM was on select models, including the Camry.

At Keller Ford in Grand Rapids, Michigan we were told that any new car or truck purchased came with a free installation of XM Satellite. Another Ford dealer stated that most new models and even many used models had satellite radio options now. A Saturn Ion comes with a free year of OnStar and XM Satellite Radio and a Pontiac G6 comes with a free year of Sirius service according to our dealer checks. Finally, a Jeep Unlimited 4-door being sold by an Ohio dealer came with a free two month subscription to Sirius Satellite service.

15 out of our 30 dealerships reported special offers of free installation or service for some form of satellite radio. It seems to us that the satellite radio option could be on the way to becoming a standard feature. It may be the limited nature of our survey or the weighting towards Toyota, but when a specific service was mentioned for satellite radio, XM was mentioned in 75% of the cases. Some multi-branded dealers mentioned both services but generally we got feedback on good deals involving XM more often than Sirius.

Which satellite radio service should I get - XM Satellite or Sirius Satellite?

Which service is selling better?Are there hot deals or discounts associated with either service?

After scrubbing the data it looks like the Radio Shack effect, did not drive a large discepenancy in our data because amazingly at 10% of the Radio Shack’s we called actually recommended XM!!! This despite the fact that they sell only Sirius service and receivers. These Radio shack employees must be personal users of XM outside their day to day duties of promoting Sirius.
Another revealing trend we saw in our research that multiple survey participants reported that while Sirius still seems to be selling better in terms of total number the difference between the two services has narrowed substantially. These respondents reported that at this time last year Sirius dominated new subscriber activations but that this year the tallies run much closer to 50-50. This reporting was consistent across the survey that the two services are close to even in consumer preference.
Sirius was generally deemed better because of popular content like Howard Stern, NASCAR and the NFL. XM content was favored by those who said it has more music selections and content and in Montreal offers more French stations which made it the preference there. All in all it looks like Sirius should outpace XM in terms of new subscriber additions this year in 4Q. We’ll re-visit this survey in December and see how our precition is playing out.