[Kenwood] Kenwood - Death of a Radio Company

[Peter Markavage]

I believe that JVC has a niche audio/video market that Kenwood wants to
get info. I has nothing to do with the Amateur Product Line. Companies
acquire Companies all the time. Kenwood recently also acquired Zetron,
Inc. Partnerships between Companies is also a big thing when it can
benefit both Companies. There's also a rumor afloat the Kenwood and Icom
have been having a "gathering of minds" relative to D-Star products. If
you look at Kenwood's financials, they are far from any immediate death.
However, like all well managed Companies, if the profitability of certain
segments in the business keeps hovering below critical mass, the wise
action would be to shut it down. Companies do this all the time. 

Personally, I think Kenwood is making a wise move to stay out of "high
end" transceiver market. The high development costs, limited market
appeal, and competitors already have a foothold would probably give them 
zip in "return on investment " dollars.

A good shopper shouldn't buy on name only. If the "name" is no longer in
the arena, it makes shopping a bit easier. Of course, it might be nice to
have a Kenwood transceiver with dual receivers, 200 watts, plasma
panoramic type screen, DVD player, satellite radio, and dual stereo
speakers with sub-woofer.

Pete, wa2cwa



On Wed, 27 Jun 2007 18:09:53 -0500 "Gregg" <W5IDX at sbcglobal.net> writes:
> 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
> 
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