[South Florida DX Association] Death of a Radio company -

[NPAlex at aol.com]

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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