Chance Miller, writing for 9to5Mac:

A new report from CBC News details the progress being made to unlock the FM radio chip that many smartphones feature. Many smartphones have an untapped FM chip inside them that users are unable to take advantage of and while many Android devices are confirmed to have the chip, the iPhone also has despite Apple not officially recognizing it.

This is fascinating. I’d love a built-in FM radio in my iPhone. It’s not a critical feature, purely a nice-to-have. But flipping things around, I can’t imagine Apple or Google feeling great about exposing an FM radio as part of their device feature list. After all, bad reception would be seen by many as a flaw in the phone, and FM radio would be free content that would compete with paid offerings like Apple Music.

That said, I expect that if one side adopts and promotes FM, it’ll spread by necessity.