[Elecraft] KPA-800 etc.

[Rudy Bakalov]

IMHO, taking the OEM route is Elecraft's best approach to meeting the demand for amplifiers and other products that are expensive to develop and bring to market.  Elecraft is a small company with very limited capital and resources and new, R&D intensive products are unlikely to be commercially viable.
Assuming that there are approximately 4,000 K3 manufactured to date, my guesstimate is that 25% of the owners will purchase an amplifier.  In other words, we are talking about 1,000 units at best; add another 100/year in future sales and the market size is still pretty small for a single-focus player.
Should Electraft take the OEM route, SPE may not be the best OEM vendor as they appear to be focused on the ham-radio market.  I would seek OEM arrangements with large manufacturers that do not depend much on amateur radio sales, such as Acom.
>From margins perspective, even small margins with no R&D cost are much better than still relatively small margins, but with a significant R&D cost.  It's all about economies of scale and economies of scale are not Elecraft's forte.
Speaking of R&D and OEM, I also think there are great opportunities to apply the OEM concept to the K3 itself.  For example, Alex VE3NEA (the guy who created CW Skimmer) has been working on a bleeding edge RTTY decoder that takes advantage of the power of modern DSP and CPU components; why not license his or any other kick-ass RTTY decoder to turn the K3 into the RTTY-er's choice?
Or how about opening the firmware so that anyone can write for the K3?  As brilliant the Elecrfat guys are, they are no match for the collective brain power of the community, not to mention their limited time.
So my bet is that we will continue seeing minor additions to the K3 product line due to limited resources and capital.
Rudy N2WQ