[Kenwood] Kenwood - Death of a Radio Company

[Gregg]

Fyi...   "W5IDX"

Subject: 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.
  
   Norm W4QN