Radio industry This article is more than 18 years oldDAB dominates digital listening
This article is more than 18 years oldDigital audio broadcast sets are becoming the dominant way of listening to digital radio, pulling ahead of the internet and TV, according to research.
The Rajar study found that among those with access to digital radio, 10.5% of all listening in August and September 2005 was via digital platforms, with DAB the fastest growing.
DAB accounted for 5.5% of total radio listening during that period among the survey group, up from 2.4% in the same period last year.
Listening to digital radio via TV was up from 2.3% to 2.9% of total listening, while internet listening held steady at 1.8%.
Though analogue listening to AM and FM services still dominates, even among those with digital radio - accounting for more than 85% of listening - the Rajar managing director, Sally de la Bedoyere, said the new figures demonstrated a "major shift" from analogue to digital receivers.
"This growing shift can also be seen in data reported by Rajar just over three weeks ago, which revealed that home ownership of DAB sets rose from 4.5% in September 2004 to 10.5% in September 2005," she said.
Sales of DAB radios have more than doubled in the last year, breaking through the 2m barrier for the first time.
According to the Digital Radio Development Bureau, digital radio sales hit 2.02m in the year to September, up from around 700,000 during the same period in 2004.
The DRDB said it anticipated retailers would sell another 500,000 DAB sets this Christmas, enabling sales to "nudge" the 3m mark.
"It took three or four years for sales of digital sets to reach 1m, it then took 11 months to get that to 2m. It now looks like it will only take about four months to get to 3m sales," said a DRDB spokeswoman.
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