iPhone Skydock for XM Radio

For all you music lovers who enjoy XM radio, Sirius has developed the Skydock for your iPhone. This will turn your iPod or iPhone into a satellite radio. The difference between the docking device and the Sirius iPhone App, is the docking devices’ ability to listen to the XM’s satellite radio signal, not just the internet streaming channels currently available on the App Stores application.

The Skydock may not be as convenient as the satellite radio installed in your car, but the cool thing about this is it doesn’t require a wi-fi signal or a cellular signal to operate. How you will be able to receive calls on the iPhone while your are jamming out to your favorite XM station hasn’t been revealed yet, but we should know more soon as the finishing touches are ironed out in the forthcoming months. The device has received “preliminary” approval by the FCC.

The interesting part of this is to see how the iPhones operating processes on the cellphone will respond to the device when it is connected. Some after-market accessories not manufactured by Apple for the iPhone, have been known to cause several problems in the past, including hardware damage. The challenge for Sirius is to manufacture the device making it as close to stock Apple iPhone accessories as possible in order to keep their product from causing problems and complications to the iPhone itself.

The Skydock is expected to cost around $120.

Well China Unicom and Apple have finally reached an agreement with each other to bring the iPhone to China. The two companies have been in negotiations for over 2 years with all talks ending in a deadlock. Apple has iPhones in 80 different countries and China has finally been added to the list. The complications in previous talks were due to China Unicom’s unwillingness to share a portion of its subscribers monthly cell phone  charges with Apple computer, as with other service providers who carry the iPhone in their respective countries.

There will be 2 models of the iPhone 3G sold in China. No word on the specs of these iPhones yet. The initial launch is expected to be in the fourth quarter of 2009. China Unicom has over 141 million subscribers.