Why Apple Never Offered a Radio Tuning App Like Android

Why has iOS never had a radio tuner? Between digitization and dissatisfaction, this technology doesn’t meet Apple’s criteria.

Why doesn’t the Apple iPhone let me listen to the radio? The question is very simple, the answer, on the other hand, is much more complicated. And now we have an answer. As is often the case with Apple-branded mysteries, it’s because it’s…complicated. Explanation.

Why has iOS never had a radio tuner?

Incorporating a radio into an electronic device is fairly easy these days. With technologies that have been around for over a century, engineers have mastered the art of radio transmission and reception. Tuners are cheap and don’t require a lot of work to install. On the other hand, the radio market itself has been steadily falling for several decades. At the same time, according to Pew Research, 83% of Americans over the age of 12 listened to the radio at least once a week in 2020. So there are many potential listeners. Why, then, deprive yourself of this with an iPhone?

The answer to this question, like many other Apple mysteries, lies partly in technology and partly in corporate culture. It’s about what the iPhone should do, not just in terms of technical components, but the role that the Cupertino company wants it to play in users’ daily lives.

Digitization and dissatisfaction

As Apple explains in the video, the iPhone had an FM tuner before the iPhone 7. At that time, Apple received a wireless/Bluetooth chip from Broadcom. At the time, Broadcom included a radio tuner on its chips. Apple engineers only needed to add a simple circuit to make this tuner work on iOS.

But they didn’t. According to Apple, the decision not to include an audio tuner app on the first iPhones, and to eliminate the radio transmitter entirely in future versions, was less about pure engineering than about modernity. Terrestrial radio is an old technology: local, limited range, with very different degrees of quality control. Which goes against Apple products and culture. The Cupertino-based company works hard to deliver a smooth and modern user experience with minimal client intervention for maximum stability no matter the circumstances. Radio doesn’t live up to these principles, it had no place in iOS.