Zune Thoughts: News Flash: 33% of Listeners Want FM Tuners

"In a Jacobs Media survey conducted between late February and March of 2007, approximately 33% of respondents in a survey consisting of over 25,000 listeners of various rock stations around the United States cited that they'd like FM radio playback on current or future iPods. Jacobs Media operates as a radio consulting firm within the United States. The poll also established that an FM playback ability seemed more important to users than an increased storage capacity, larger screen or video playback according to Macworld UK. To date, Apple has never included a built-in FM receiver with its iPod devices, leaving third-party firms to provide these features. Microsoft's Zune MP3 player, which debuted in late 2006, made a point of including FM radio support and marketing this as a missing feature not found on the iPod."

Wait a second here, 33% of radio listeners want radio tuners in their MP3 players? Shocking. Actually, I'm amazed that percentage is so low. Why would radio listeners not want an FM tuner in their player? Do they think it adds considerable cost to the device? Many manufacturers (namely everyone but Apple) proved that wrong long ago. So what's Apple's stubbornness here? Why is it they don't want people listening to the radio on their iPod? Because then they won't be interested in buying more tunes from iTunes? I suspect that's part of the reason, but as usual Apple's true motivations remain obscure.