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Kenwood's Future

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KE4INM

Kenwood's Future

I may be mistaken, but I don't see Amateur Radio in there future. Check out
the JVC-Kenwood Holdings Website.

http://www.jk-holdings.com/en/corporate/strategy/index.html
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Guy, K2AV

Re: Kenwood's Future

Yup. Read and weep. We are a niche. Very much a niche, and a
complaining niche at that.

On Mon, Feb 15, 2010 at 3:07 PM, KE4INM <[hidden email]> wrote:

> I may be mistaken, but I don't see Amateur Radio in there future. Check out
> the JVC-Kenwood Holdings Website.
>
> http://www.jk-holdings.com/en/corporate/strategy/index.html
> ______________________________________________________________
> Elecraft mailing list
> Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft
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w7aqk

Re: Kenwood's Future

I'm not so sure I agree! According to the chart, "communications equipment"
seems to make up about 40% of the Kenwood side of the business. Of course,
they do a lot of non-ham stuff (marine, etc.), but still, if you are in the
communications business, it isn't a huge jump necessarily from one type of
communications equipment to another. Lots of similarity in the R & D, etc.

Kenwood seemed to de-emphasize ham gear in the late 90's and early 21st
century. But I think a lot of that might have been economics--I bought my
Mark V, for example, near the end of it's production, and paid less than $2K
for it new. If you recall, the Yen was in the toilet back then, and I think
Kenwood was having trouble justifying the production costs vs. the kind of
prices that ham gear was selling for back then. Then Icom raised the bar
with the IC7800, and Yaesu followed with the FT-9000. Suddenly, we were
looking at $10,000 rigs, with subsequent "reduced capability" models that
still demanded a $5K+ price tag. The economics changed! Even the K3, at
about $4K was twice the price of the Mark V. Now just about every higher
end rig is $3K to $4K minimum! That's not just inflation working, it's an
elevation in the market itself!

Kenwood came out with the TS-480 and TS-2000, but at low to mid-level
prices, around the beginning of this century. They were not sure (I
suspect) that other higher priced ham gear would succeed. Now I think there
is enough market data to convince them that maybe the communications market
(including ham gear) can be sold more profitably. Thus, I think that may be
why they are putting their foot back into the water. At least that's how I
interpret their announced intention to come out with a K3 "clone", and
probably a high end rig to compete with the big Icom and Yaesu rigs.

It's really hard to figure out how japanese companies make their product
decisions. They are very secretive about a lot of things--it's an entirely
different process there. You also have to realize that just the japanese
market alone is huge! I think they have something like three times the
number of hams that we have here in the U.S. A lot of their products never
even make it to the international market. If we understood the japanese
market better, we would probably have a much better idea about just what
they might be willling to produce. That fact is obvious to me, due to the
fact that they have already shown a prototype in Japan as much as a year or
more in advance of our seeing it at Dayton. My guess is that the response
in Japan has been positive--at least positive enough to justify giving it
exposure elsewhere.

If they really do announce a K3 "clone" at Dayton this year, I have little
doubt that something even bigger will follow, like a competitor to the
IC-7800. Kenwood is a big company--a very big company--even bigger than
Icom or Yaesu if I'm not mistaken. I think what we've seen in the last 10
years or so is a very big company get very conservative about a segment of
their market for a variety of reasons. It just may be that, like turning an
aircraft carrier, this very big company is slowly turning into the wind to
launch. If I look at this from a different angle, it makes no sense that
they would introduce new products, after such a hiatus, unless they had
bigger plans on the drawing board.

Dave W7AQK
----- Original Message -----
From: "Guy Olinger K2AV" <[hidden email]>
To: "KE4INM" <[hidden email]>
Cc: "Elecraft Reflector" <[hidden email]>
Sent: Monday, February 15, 2010 3:11 PM
Subject: Re: [Elecraft] Kenwood's Future

> Yup. Read and weep. We are a niche. Very much a niche, and a
> complaining niche at that.
>
> On Mon, Feb 15, 2010 at 3:07 PM, KE4INM <[hidden email]> wrote:
>> I may be mistaken, but I don't see Amateur Radio in there future. Check
>> out
>> the JVC-Kenwood Holdings Website.
>>
>> http://www.jk-holdings.com/en/corporate/strategy/index.html
>> ______________________________________________________________
>> Elecraft mailing list
>> Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft
>> Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
>> Post: mailto:[hidden email]
>>
>> This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
>> Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
>>
> ______________________________________________________________
> Elecraft mailing list
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Philippe Trottet

Re: Kenwood's Future

In reply to this post by KE4INM

May be, Others 3% !

>>> KE4INM <[hidden email]> 16-02-2010 0:07 >>>
I may be mistaken, but I don't see Amateur Radio in there future. Check out
the JVC-Kenwood Holdings Website.

http://www.jk-holdings.com/en/corporate/strategy/index.html
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Eric Manning

Re: Kenwood's Future

In reply to this post by KE4INM

One of the K2 owners has worked in communications equipment marketing
for many years. He told me once that he absolutely hates the ham market
segment because
we are never satisfied and are extreme cheapskates.

[I prefer to call it the amateur spirit of doing a lot with a little -
the junkbox tradition - and continuously improving
our gear - until something breaks.]

Anyway, because we are such a pain in the pants, maybe Kenwood will get
out of the amateur market segment.

eric VA7DZ
K3 3640

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