[ETS/PARC List] [South Florida DX Association] Death of a Radio company]

[Drew Moore]

Death of a Radio Company
>From the ARRL's site...

http://www.arrl.org/?artid=7540

Kenwood to merge with JVC next year (Jun 25, 2007)
-- This Week in Consumer Electronics (TWICE) reports that Kenwood has agreed
to merge in 2008 with Victor Company of Japan (JVC) under a holding company. 
JVC is owned by Matsushita Electric Industrial Company. Japan's Nikkei 
business newspaper reports  that the final details should be worked out by 
the end of the month, and that under the plan, Kenwood will buy 20 billion 
yen ($161,469,466) in JVC shares as early
as this summer, raising its stake to 13 percent. Matsushita will also sell 
part of its 52.7 percent of JVC to Kenwood's top shareholder, the Sparx 
Group. When JVC and Kenwood integrate operations under the holding company 
in  2008, Matsushita will sell the rest of its JVC shares to the holding 
company to complete the transaction. The holding company's stock will be 
listed instead of Kenwood and JVC, according to Nikkei. Combined, Kenwood's 
and JVC's  sales are $7.3 billion dollars annually for their fiscal year 
that ended March 31. k1zxx wrote:

Many years ago we watched with some ambivalence the slow decline of the 
Drake
Company from the amateur ranks. Mr. W.R. Drake had died and his non ham son
was at the helm wanting to take the company in a different direction. At the 
time the excitement was high with new radios coming out from Kenwood, Yaesu 
and ICOM. We are at a similar fork in the road with Kenwood. Looking at the 
excitement almost every manufacture experienced at Dayton, Kenwood was one 
of the loan exceptions.
I talked with their North American sales Manager, Phil and he said they have 
no high performance HF radio in the pipeline. The sales crew looked haggard 
and tired and when I visited their booth on Friday and Saturday at Dayton, 
no one was smiling. No give aways, no fluf and the booth was looking old. 
The booth was for the most part vacant and best served as a short cut to the 
MFJ booths further into the arena. They had an empty Plexiglas covered box 
on Thursday during set up and many hoped a new high HF
radio was to appear on Friday. Come Friday morning...just a VHF mobile. At 
the  Visalia DX Convention a month earlier, the Kenwood Factory 
representative left on Saturday at noon while the convention show lasted for 
5 more hours. Just some brochures were left on the table. They had a TS-2000 
but no one stopped to talk. I would have to say the
morale at Kenwood must be very low. Their two-way radio division is doing 
very well but not having a licensed ham at the helm of the amateur radio 
division is taking its toll. I feel Kenwood has suffered greatly in the HF 
community since the TS-870 was pulled from production with out a 
replacement. The last so called high performance design was the TS-2000 
which started designed in late 1999. The technology is over 7 years old and 
getting long in the tooth. I have been a Kenwood man for 35 years. My first 
Kenwood radios were the 599 twins. I own a TS-2000 as a backup radio and it 
is a very fine $1500 radio but it is not a cutting edge performer. I finally 
went to an IC-756 Pro III when
I upgraded my HF radio and as a result also bought several ICOM VHF radios.
The lack of a flagship radio does transcend your buying decision for other
radio purchases. I saw this downward spiral of esteem with the Drake line 
after
the old man died and his non ham son took over. The rest was history. I hope
Kenwood is not on the same path. If 3 guys at Elecraft can bring out a high
perform HF transceiver, the K3 in a year's time, it makes you think there 
is no one
left in engineering at Kenwood other than the two way radio division. The 
crowd at Elecraft booth were two or three deep for much of the show and with 
every new buyer of a K3 sprouting a proud K3 button his shirt. By the end of 
the show they must have taken
hundreds of orders for I saw K3 buttons every time I looked at the crowd. I 
hope this is not the beginning of the end for Kenwood but as a wise man once 
said, watch what a person does, not what they say. Kenwood's actions are 
speaking very loud. Their last truly full featured high performance HF 
transceiver with real simultaneous dual HF receive capability was the 
TS-950SDX, which was  discontinued over a decade ago! Go figure!.
Kenwood has been conspicuously lacking participation in the "high end" HF 
products such as the IC-7800 and FT-9000 products. Looks like now that may 
never come for Kenwood.