Apple: ‘Chip? What FM Chip?’
The war of words between Apple and those calling for the company to activate the FM chip inside the iPhone escalated late last week — as you may recall, in the wake of Hurricanes Patrick, Irma and Marie, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai had publicly called upon Apple to activate the FM chips on iPhones for public safety reasons. Late last week Apple issued a statement that read, “iPhone 7 and iPhone 8 models do not have FM radio chips in them, nor do they have antennas designed to support FM signals, so it is not possible to enable FM reception in these products.”
Ahem… in response to Apple’s statement, the NAB said, “Oh reallllly?” Okay, we were paraphrasing… In reality, NAB EVP of Communications Dennis Wharton retorted, “Since 2012 NAB has commissioned quarterly ‘tear down’ reports from ABI Research on a wide variety of Smartphones to discover their capabilities. ABI’s analysis reveals that every Apple iPhone built during that time, including the iPhone 7, has a chipset that includes support for FM radio. Apple also continues to sell an iPhone 6S with an FM chip that is not activated, and there are nearly 100 million iPhones in the marketplace with a deactivated FM chip.
Wharton continued, “Like FCC Chairman Pai, we encourage Apple to activate this feature on their future handsets so Americans can have access to lifesaving information during emergency situations, something that many local radio stations provide. We welcome the opportunity to work with Apple to make that happen.” Apple — the ball is now in your court.
• In a related story, Adams Radio Group just launched a companywide campaign in support of FM chip activation — details about that can be found a little further down the page…
