[Elecraft] K3 improvements was: A Rob Sherwood's talk in Dayton

[Tony Estep]

On Fri, Jun 7, 2013 at 2:14 PM, Ray Sills <raysills3 at verizon.net> wrote:

> I don't think the intent for not adding improvements that can't be done
> for -any- K3 is there to hold back....
>
===========
Well, the idea of continuing hardware changes has not generally been
embraced by any ham manufacturers, for reasons that ought to be obvious. No
manufacturer could stay in business long if their products had versions A,
B, C, D etc., varying only by the addition of an RF choke in the audio or
similar minor tweaks.

Sometimes after a production run of several years, a staple product is
upgraded (usually with a price increase!); think of the FT897D, for
example, which introduced new circuitry and features and was a (somewhat)
different radio packaged in basically the same way as its predecessor. This
of course clobbers the resale value of the earlier model. Whether or not it
leaves a bad taste with the customer depends on the significance of the
changes, the product life of the original version, pricing, and other
marketing-related issues. Positioning a product, or a line of products, in
the minds of consumers is a delicate art that even marketing masters like
Apple or Procter & Gamble struggle with.

In the ham market, the current answer -- which I think is a very good one
-- is to put as much flexibility as possible in upgradeable firmware, which
can be supplied as a free download. This allows the manufacturer to
constantly upgrade the product, and create customer loyalty and happiness
at the same time: the exact opposite of what happens when a new hardware
version is introduced that causes the previous hardware to seem outmoded.


Tony KT0NY

-- 
http://www.isb.edu/faculty/facultydir.aspx?ddlFaculty=352