Author Topic: Investing in a DAB radio company  (Read 4837 times)

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Offline ocsetTopic starter

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Investing in a DAB radio company
« on: May 09, 2020, 09:14:16 am »
Hi,
I have been offered the chance to invest in a company making reliable, small  DAB radios in UK…”British designed and built, with full warrantee”
How can I find out whether or not the company is simply middle-manning  them in from China?
 

Online The Soulman

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Re: Investing in a DAB radio company
« Reply #1 on: May 09, 2020, 09:25:49 am »
Yeah, must be chinese old-stock, everybody is moving to DAB+ now.

Quote
How can I find out whether or not the company is simply middle-manning  them in from China?

Joking aside, just visit the place where they do their designing and building?
If they're reluctant, you'll know enough.
 

Offline Gyro

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Re: Investing in a DAB radio company
« Reply #2 on: May 09, 2020, 10:50:25 am »
The DAB market is pretty well populated with established UK manufactureres, you've got Pure, Roberts, Revo, and Ruark... all British, not to mention the multinational players, mainly Sony [Edit: and a bunch of cheap Chinese OEMs.]

If this is a startup, then you're going to need to offer something that they don't, and be able to match their buying power when it comes to parts. Not to mention brand awareness and marketing. If it's one of the established companies, I doubt that they would be looking for small investments.

Have you done any research at all on this?  It sounds like your worst nightmare - trying compete against decent British companies with no excuses!  ;D
« Last Edit: May 09, 2020, 11:05:44 am by Gyro »
Best Regards, Chris
 
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Offline greenpossum

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Re: Investing in a DAB radio company
« Reply #3 on: May 09, 2020, 11:07:59 am »
If they spell warranty that way perhaps you should not DABble in them, hahaha.
 
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Offline richard.cs

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Re: Investing in a DAB radio company
« Reply #4 on: May 09, 2020, 01:08:44 pm »
Does anyone even use DAB in the UK? I personally don't know anyone who does. FM is likely to remain king here for a long time yet, any attempt to enforce a switchover will probably just lead to rise in the pirate stations.
 
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Offline AndyC_772

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Re: Investing in a DAB radio company
« Reply #5 on: May 09, 2020, 01:48:23 pm »
DAB in the UK is dead. It always was.

Receivers were (and are) expensive, and use much more battery power than FM. Sound quality is atrocious because of an outdated codec and the fact that way too many stations are crammed into the available bandwidth, so they all have a pitiful bit rate.

We have mobile internet access now. There's just no use case for commercial digital broadcasts.

How can I find out whether or not the company is simply middle-manning  them in from China?

Tour the factory!
 
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Online tom66

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Re: Investing in a DAB radio company
« Reply #6 on: May 09, 2020, 02:03:42 pm »
DAB is a terrible standard.  Worse audio performance than FM, essentially useless in cars, barely usable indoors (mm, bubbly sound), and receivers are damn expensive.

I know the guy who was behind the development of one of the first DAB receivers to hit UK stores - back in 2000 or so - it shipped with an Altera FPGA to do the audio decode!   Massive loss leader just to get them into homes, but ultimately not successful.
 
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Offline MK14

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Re: Investing in a DAB radio company
« Reply #7 on: May 09, 2020, 02:39:45 pm »
Hi,
I have been offered the chance to invest in a company making reliable, small  DAB radios in UK…”British designed and built, with full warrantee”
How can I find out whether or not the company is simply middle-manning  them in from China?

Sounds (ignore the pun) like a bad idea.

For a while, companies are likely to be under extreme strain, because of the coronavirus and its huge economic effects. Some/many, may even go bankrupt.
With some exceptions, now is not a good time to suddenly invest in a company, you may lose all your money, in the coming future.
Given, you don't even seem to know if they are really made in the UK (or China). It sounds like you know far too little, to invest in the company.
tl;dr
Hold on to your money, and don't invest.

Also, as others have said/hinted. Whatever eventually replaces DAB, may be worth getting. But, I've heard bad things about dab radio. Such as the UK went far too early into it, and chose a terrible system, which is probably worse than the existing FM signals. E.g. Quality wise.
If they had waited, there would have been much cheaper (because others, such as the rest of Europe, would have used it, bringing the prices down and the quality up), and better solutions.

I've tried dab myself briefly, and ended up being rather disappointed with it. The sound quality was somewhat poor, and the radio seemed fiddly and a pain in the neck, to adjust/tune etc. The battery life, doesn't seem too good, either.

It should have been (my opinion), great quality (MP3 or near CD), stereo (it doesn't always seem to be, especially on cheap dab radios, which I think are mono), very good/long battery life, very cheap, very easy to use, and have much less interference/disruption to the signals.
My understanding is the dab system, offers none of what I just mentioned (even the lack of interference, although basically correct, as it is digital, is replaced by possible fading in and out signals, if I remember correctly, it was a long time ago).
 
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Online themadhippy

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Re: Investing in a DAB radio company
« Reply #8 on: May 09, 2020, 02:41:54 pm »
must be in the minority here,had a dab receiver since the first time dixons closed there stores and they were selling stock off at  ridiculously cheap prices.With a small external aerial the sound quality is fine for my deaf ears.
 
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Online coppice

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Re: Investing in a DAB radio company
« Reply #9 on: May 09, 2020, 02:46:04 pm »
Does anyone even use DAB in the UK? I personally don't know anyone who does. FM is likely to remain king here for a long time yet, any attempt to enforce a switchover will probably just lead to rise in the pirate stations.
Millions of people in the UK use DAB. but in their cars. not their homes. People don't use any kind of radio in their homes much these days. I took part in a survey about radio usage last year, and the lady questioning me said the majority of reported radio usage is now in cars, with some growth in using the BBC's sounds app at home.
 
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Online coppice

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Re: Investing in a DAB radio company
« Reply #10 on: May 09, 2020, 02:52:25 pm »
Hi,
I have been offered the chance to invest in a company making reliable, small  DAB radios in UK…”British designed and built, with full warrantee”
How can I find out whether or not the company is simply middle-manning  them in from China?
Like most UK electronics these days I expect:
  • Design means they pick among several finishes the actual maker offers, and specify how to add their logo.
  • Build means the do final assembly of a kit from the actual maker.
  • If they can't even spell warranty, they'll probably just pass on the actual maker's manual with its poor English, unable to polish it.
 
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Offline MK14

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Re: Investing in a DAB radio company
« Reply #11 on: May 09, 2020, 02:52:42 pm »
must be in the minority here,had a dab receiver since the first time dixons closed there stores and they were selling stock off at  ridiculously cheap prices.With a small external aerial the sound quality is fine for my deaf ears.

Unfortunately, I do tend to be somewhat of a hi-fi buff (like). So, to me, it sounds somewhat terrible (sorry).
But, it was a rather cheap and nasty dab radio, I tried. That could have been a factor as well.

But, I think I have heard reviews and things say, the dab radio sound quality is not very good. Especially not compared to the much later, and better standards, which emerged, in Europe.
 
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Offline SiliconWizard

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Re: Investing in a DAB radio company
« Reply #12 on: May 09, 2020, 02:54:46 pm »
DAB has never really taken off over here, and in many other countries in Europe. Interesting to see there are still a lot of people using that in the UK, but I would still see this as a pretty small market overall, and likely to disappear as internet connections will become increasingly available inside cars. Just MHO though.
 
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Online coppice

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Re: Investing in a DAB radio company
« Reply #13 on: May 09, 2020, 03:00:21 pm »
But, I think I have heard reviews and things say, the dab radio sound quality is not very good. Especially not compared to the much later, and better standards, which emerged, in Europe.
There are two huge weaknesses in the original DAB spec. They rushed the spec out, even though it was obviously going to take quite a long time to move in the market. This meant they had to use a crappy codec. because the first of the decent ones, like MP3, were still in development. By the time DAB product development had really got anywhere, MP3 was available. They made some funky choices in the coding, so there are situations where a weak signal causes a modest bit error rate, but this results in some very unpleasant noises.

I think most of the DAB radios in the UK are DAB+ designs, which fix these problems. However, because some early DAB only radios are still around, the transmission side has not been changed.
 
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Offline Bicurico

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Re: Investing in a DAB radio company
« Reply #14 on: May 09, 2020, 03:14:12 pm »
Hi,
I have been offered the chance to invest in a company making reliable, small  DAB radios in UK…”British designed and built, with full warrantee”
How can I find out whether or not the company is simply middle-manning  them in from China?

This raises the following questions:

1) Why have YOU been offered this chance? If it is such a good deal, why has the person offering it to you not taken up the chance himself?
2) DAB has been replaced, technology-wise, by DAB+ in most parts of the world. You better make sure the company is developing DAB+ radios!
3) What does "British designed and built" mean? Do you mean the "product" design, the chip design, the software design (again: are we talking about the full system or just the GUI implementation), etc.
4) How big is the market?
5) Why does the company need YOUR investment? If the company needs your investment, you are either incredibly rich and can put a lot of money in this company at an interest rate beneficial for both parties or we are talking of a small start-up company that will probably buy a SoC with SDK to "design" the radio around it: good luck with that.

Note that so far DAB and DAB+ has been a major flop. For everyone involved.

Radio stations cannot afford their stream to be included by in the transmitters, reagional broadcasters have no benefits of the nation-wide broadcast, since they make money from local advertising. Users prefer FM broadcast due to its better reception, especially when moving in a car or in less than optimal reception areas.

Finally, the sound quality of DAB/DAB+ is far from the promised CD quality. It is actually worse than FM, due to the compression level imposed by adding too many radio stations in one single transponder.

DAB/DAB+ will only start to become relevant when the analog FM shutdown comes. This has been delayed a few times and the truth is that when it finally happens, people will be streaming internet radios rather than listining to DAB/DAB+.

Conclusion: I would definitly not invest my money in this technology.

Regards,
Vitor
 
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Offline MK14

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Re: Investing in a DAB radio company
« Reply #15 on: May 09, 2020, 03:14:49 pm »
But, I think I have heard reviews and things say, the dab radio sound quality is not very good. Especially not compared to the much later, and better standards, which emerged, in Europe.
There are two huge weaknesses in the original DAB spec. They rushed the spec out, even though it was obviously going to take quite a long time to move in the market. This meant they had to use a crappy codec. because the first of the decent ones, like MP3, were still in development. By the time DAB product development had really got anywhere, MP3 was available. They made some funky choices in the coding, so there are situations where a weak signal causes a modest bit error rate, but this results in some very unpleasant noises.

I think most of the DAB radios in the UK are DAB+ designs, which fix these problems. However, because some early DAB only radios are still around, the transmission side has not been changed.

That is so sad and crazy.

When the UK, moved to colour TV (from memory, around 1966, PAL, BBC2, the new second! UK channel). They were very clever in the signals design. It maintained compatibility with 625 line black and white signal TVs, and yet added the 2 extra colour signals, so that full colour TV could be shown. From the same TV signal.

I.e. It could be used for black and white (625 line) TVs, or on (much more expensive and very rare at the time), colour 625 line (PAL) TVs.

If my memory is playing up (there was eventually a third TV station, ITV), and there were 405 line (old standard) Tvs, still floating about, for many years, after that. Until the signal (405, great reception quality, with simple Aerials, usually all valve/tube sets) was eventually turned off in the 1980's.
N.B. All above from memory, so could be out by a bit.

I.e. Dab, should have been able to have (include the option for) later/future standards, which still kept the old radios working. This should have been thought of, when dab was originally conceived.
Analogy: Otherwise, we would still be limited to a maximum of 4K of Ram on microprocessors (Intel 4004), and maybe 640K of ram, on PCs.
« Last Edit: May 09, 2020, 03:17:35 pm by MK14 »
 
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Offline Bicurico

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Re: Investing in a DAB radio company
« Reply #16 on: May 09, 2020, 03:23:03 pm »
Quote
I.e. Dab, should have been able to later standards, which still kept the old radios working. This should have been thought of, when dab was originally conceived.
Analogy: Otherwise, we would still be limited to a maximum of 4K of Ram on microprocessors (Intel 4004), and maybe 640K of ram, on PCs.

DAB/DAB+ were developed to produce a new market and respective demand. Those implementing it could not care less about existing receivers! Interestingly this is the reason it failed completely.

The same happend when analog TV was replaced with DVB-T. You would expect one single norm for the whole world or at least the EU.

But no: in a short period of time we got two modulations (DVB-T and DVB-T2).

These carry different codecs: MPEG2 or MPEG4, MP3 or AAC. In any combination!

This means that a DVB-T receiver sold in Spain may not work in Portugal...

In Germany they introduced DVB-T with MPEG2/MP3 but after only a few years they replaced it by DVB-T2. Imagine the amount of incompatible TV's which were brand new! And an even higher amount of receivers that are obsolete in 1-4 years...

Oh, and there was DVB-H, too... Meant to provide audio and video to moving cars. It died because of DAB/DAB+, if I correctly remember.

With all this said and staying on topic, the only reason to invest in a company in this field is if you can lobby your exclusive right to produce a compbination of demodulator and codec that allows you to own the market for a given period of time (ahead of competitors) and with a market created by a forced shutdown.

Regards,
Vitor
 
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Offline MK14

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Re: Investing in a DAB radio company
« Reply #17 on: May 09, 2020, 04:17:18 pm »
DAB/DAB+ were developed to produce a new market and respective demand. Those implementing it could not care less about existing receivers! Interestingly this is the reason it failed completely.

The same happend when analog TV was replaced with DVB-T. You would expect one single norm for the whole world or at least the EU.

But no: in a short period of time we got two modulations (DVB-T and DVB-T2).

These carry different codecs: MPEG2 or MPEG4, MP3 or AAC. In any combination!

This means that a DVB-T receiver sold in Spain may not work in Portugal...

In Germany they introduced DVB-T with MPEG2/MP3 but after only a few years they replaced it by DVB-T2. Imagine the amount of incompatible TV's which were brand new! And an even higher amount of receivers that are obsolete in 1-4 years...

Oh, and there was DVB-H, too... Meant to provide audio and video to moving cars. It died because of DAB/DAB+, if I correctly remember.

Regards,
Vitor

This concept, seems to happen, lots of the time.
Driving on the left vs right.
VHS vs Betamax (vs V2000/Video2000)
Blu-ray vs HD DVD
DVD-R vs DVD+R
Big-endian vs Little-endian
Metres/Kilometres vs Yards/Feet/Miles/Inches
UK Gallons vs US Gallons (This always gets me, how on earth can they be different sizes, but the same NAME, crazy).
Because of Brexit, I suspect there will be more to add to this list.
Mains voltages, (50/60Hz) frequencies, max currents, plug/socket types/styles, are not exactly standardised on a world-wide basis.
 
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Online coppice

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Re: Investing in a DAB radio company
« Reply #18 on: May 09, 2020, 04:29:15 pm »
I.e. Dab, should have been able to have (include the option for) later/future standards, which still kept the old radios working. This should have been thought of, when dab was originally conceived.
Analogy: Otherwise, we would still be limited to a maximum of 4K of Ram on microprocessors (Intel 4004), and maybe 640K of ram, on PCs.
Just like DVB-T, DAB does provide for upgrades. The channel ID, codecs, bit rate, and other parameters are send in the bit stream, so these can be changed at any time, and the receiver knows what it is receiving. However, an old receiver can't make sense of newer features. As with DVB-T, DAB could be broadcast concurrently in older and newer forms, with the receivers able to select the stream which best suits them. The BBC and ITV TV channels have chosen to do this. The radio channels haven't.

Comparision witth analogue TV is similar. 405 line TV couldn't be made compatible with 625 line, so they arranged parallel broadcasts of the two standards (although in limited amounts. Most people had to wait for colour broadcasts to start in order to get the parallel higher resolution broadcast (which was a HHHUUUGGGEEE improvement) on their B/W TVs). Those old analogue systems didn't tell the receiver what it was receiving, so selection was entirely manual. It was a natural thing to make colour transmissions compatible with black and white, so that is what they did, and the 625 line B/W transmissions could migrate seamlessly to a combined B/W and colour signal. Another compatibility choice was with FM radio. There was nothing particularly natural about the way they added stereo to FM transmissions, but there was a strong desire to make a single transmission compatible with both mono and stereo receivers. So, they cooked up the sum and difference approach, and merged the 2 signals onto a single carrier, using a sub-carrier. Selection was fully automatic there, as a stereo capable receiver just has to detect the sub-carrier.

History is full of upgrades where the choice has to be made between running parallel systems vs a single merged compatible system. The choices made have mostly made sense.
 
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Offline richard.cs

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Re: Investing in a DAB radio company
« Reply #19 on: May 09, 2020, 04:39:30 pm »
Millions of people in the UK use DAB. but in their cars. not their homes. People don't use any kind of radio in their homes much these days. I took part in a survey about radio usage last year, and the lady questioning me said the majority of reported radio usage is now in cars, with some growth in using the BBC's sounds app at home.

And yet you can still buy a new car and not get a DAB radio. Yes these are now a minority but they will be on the road for the next 15 years or so:

https://radiotoday.co.uk/2020/01/record-year-for-dab-radio-as-standard-in-new-vehicles/
Quote

DAB in new car registrations rose to a record 95% of all new cars in Q4 2019, while DAB in new commercial vehicles increased to a record of over 64%.
 
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Online coppice

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Re: Investing in a DAB radio company
« Reply #20 on: May 09, 2020, 04:47:05 pm »
Millions of people in the UK use DAB. but in their cars. not their homes. People don't use any kind of radio in their homes much these days. I took part in a survey about radio usage last year, and the lady questioning me said the majority of reported radio usage is now in cars, with some growth in using the BBC's sounds app at home.

And yet you can still buy a new car and not get a DAB radio. Yes these are now a minority but they will be on the road for the next 15 years or so:
DAB radios only became commonplace in cars quite recently, so most of them are DAB+. They could kill DAB transmissions, and go 100% DAB+, leaving the people without DAB+ support in their radio to use FM, and the number of people annoyed probably wouldn't be that big.
 
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Offline MK14

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Re: Investing in a DAB radio company
« Reply #21 on: May 09, 2020, 05:15:42 pm »
History is full of upgrades where the choice has to be made between running parallel systems vs a single merged compatible system. The choices made have mostly made sense.

I guess, there is not a perfect solution, to such a problem. You just have to choose the best compromises, overall, and accept the inevitable negative comments.
What I find funny, about many negative comments, is they (e.g. the government), would have got such comments, regardless of what option they had chosen ?

E.g. Quarantine all airports in January. Negative comments "Huge over-reaction by UK government, when there are still zero or few deaths in the UK".
Insist on quarantine for all UK airports, at end of May. Negative comments "You should have done it in January".

tl;dr
You can't win.

DAB radios only became commonplace in cars quite recently, so most of them are DAB+. They could kill DAB transmissions, and go 100% DAB+, leaving the people without DAB+ support in their radio to use FM, and the number of people annoyed probably wouldn't be that big.

I think, a while back. The BBC, on purpose, switched off certain AM (if I remember correctly) signal(s). For a limited (but significant) period of time. As an experiment.
I remember, they didn't receive a single complaint.
They were using those tests as ammunition, so that they can permanently switch off AM broadcasts (I think).
 
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Offline Gyro

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Re: Investing in a DAB radio company
« Reply #22 on: May 09, 2020, 05:52:38 pm »
Hi,
I have been offered the chance to invest in a company making reliable, small  DAB radios in UK…”British designed and built, with full warrantee”
How can I find out whether or not the company is simply middle-manning  them in from China?
Like most UK electronics these days I expect:
  • Design means they pick among several finishes the actual maker offers, and specify how to add their logo.
  • Build means the do final assembly of a kit from the actual maker.
  • If they can't even spell warranty, they'll probably just pass on the actual maker's manual with its poor English, unable to polish it.

You might expect wrong in this particular case. DAB has 'traditionally' (if that's the right word) been something of a niche area - probably because it is a fairly localised standard. When I was designing high volume consumer in the UK, we were lobbied quite hard by the semiconductor manufacturers to produce a DAB product. Unfortunately my oriental lords and masters vetoed the idea, which was a shame because the achievable margins would have been much better than a lot of our DVB-T stuff.

Even so, I've been surprised how those prices have held up over the years, for what is a fairly simple (but dedicated) chipset and frontend. Not the sort of thing that you want to run extensively on batteries though.

Support tends to be pretty good - Pure, for instance, offer standard 3 year warranty (not wishing to do treez's basic research for him).

We have a couple of DAB radios around the house, handy for listening to Radio 4 and R4ex. It was nice when the car came with it too. It's at market saturation these days though.
Best Regards, Chris
 
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Offline intmpe

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Re: Investing in a DAB radio company
« Reply #23 on: May 09, 2020, 06:03:20 pm »
The requirements for "made in xxx" country are usually pretty low - like 10 or 20% content.

This can often mean just putting a foreign made product into a locally sourced box.

The way you find out is easy - if they are asking you to invest - show up and "audit" the place - talk to their design staff. They would be happy to see an investor take the interest. Less so if its a scam.
 
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Offline SiliconWizard

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Re: Investing in a DAB radio company
« Reply #24 on: May 09, 2020, 06:11:40 pm »
Agreed with above: obvious answer: how can you find out? Easy: audit the fricking place!
Any serious investor would do this anyway. Just ask them for that, plan your audit, sign some agreement (so they are guaranteed of confidentiality), and do it!
 
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