Sirius Aims for 3 Million Subscribers

Sirius announced Tuesday that it had nearly doubled its third quarter subscriber numbers, adding 359,000 new customers during the quarter. Sirius ended the quarter with 2.17 million subscribers. In comparison, XM said on Monday it had added 617,000 subscribers during the quarter for a total of 5.03 million.

XM's growing lead doesn't seem to bother Mel Karmazin, Sirius' CEO. "We continued to experience strong subscriber growth during the third quarter, which was the best third quarter in our history, and increased our market share from the year-ago quarter by more than 20%," Karmazin said. Sirius said it expects to have three million subscribers by the end of the year.