George Parthimos, chief executive of miRoamer, said the Blaupunkt 600i is the first “purpose-built Internet car radio, where the Internet radio capabilities are an ingredient part of the actual unit itself.”
“It will have everything you’d expect to find in a medium- to high-end radio — AM/FM, CD, MP3 — with the added ingredient of Internet radio,” he said of the device, which was unveiled at the annual Consumer Electronics Show here.
A 3G mobile phone with a data plan is needed to connect the radio to the Internet, Parthimos said, and the company estimates the average user would consume around two gigabytes of data a month.
“It uses Bluetooth connectivity to connect to a cellphone and then the cellphone connects to a cellular network,” he said. “The mobile is purely used to connect to the Internet.
“The actual radio itself is where all your settings and all your user experience happens,” Parthimos said. “As soon as you jump in your car your mobile will automatically synch to the radio itself.”
Parthimos, whose Melbourne-based company is an online aggregator of radio content, said Blaupunkt expects to launch the radio in the second half of the year, initially in the United States and Europe.
“As for in-car installs, we’ve been inundated with a lot of companies who are interested in this,” he said, declining to name the interested automobile manufacturers. “I would imagine that that would probably happen in 2010.”
Parthimos said Blaupunkt expects the radio to cost around 399 dollars.
Via [ENGADGET]
