In its results, Sirius XM reported that Sirius Canada had 866,430 subscribers at the end of May 2011, up from 744,000 at the end of February 2011.
The subscriber numbers were startlingly because over three years ago, in June 2008, when it was still a private company, Sirius Canada announced that it had exceeded 750,000 paying subscribers. At the time, the announced number was quite astounding as XM Canada had just reported having under 440,000 customers.
The numbers are even more surprising when you consider that in January 2010, Sirius Canada, still a private company, announced it had exceeded 1,000,000 subscribers . When the million subscriber milestone was announced it was almost double the number of paying subscribers reported by XM Canada.
The numbers mean that between the time Sirius Canada was a private company (January 2010) and the time it was finalizing its merger (February 2011), the company lost over a quarter of a million subscribers!
While it was a private company and was announcing these huge subscriber gains, Digital Home contacted Sirius Canada on multiple occasions to discuss their subscriber counts. Each time, the Sirius Canada spokesperson informed me that the numbers announced by Sirius were “self-paying” customers. Self-paying subscribers are customers who are paying for the service. Self-paying subscribers do not include new car buyers currently in an OEM trial period where the automakers has agreed to pay for all or a portion of the trial period service .
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