Batboard

Could this be the end to the Motorola public safety radio group as we know it today?

Take a look at this link and draw your own conclusions.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ ... story.html

Jim

Yep. Saw that. Who knows how this will shake out. Above my pay grade.

Greg Brown has been priming the company for this for a long time. He's sold off everything that can be sold off. Half the Schaumburg campus... half of Plantation... all of Symbol... he even took a $500 million bath on Symbol he wanted to get rid of it so bad

This makes me think it is time to go Kenwood. With the sell off of Symbol, and moving of most of their technical support, it just isn't worth the hassle of staying with Motorola.

I have not been to Schaumburg in 6-7 years though, so have not seen first hand how bad it is.

Everything I own Motorola wise has been end of life for about a year now. I began to see the writing on the wall when the military started buying Harris and Thales instead of Motorola a couple of years ago. Requiring each unit to have it own license, each user to have their own account.....that kind of mess. I was in a Spectrum Management role at that time. The base I was at would have needed a dozen licenses instead of the one it had before. (Small installation of only a few hundred troops.) It would have been a substantial financial impact. The last batch of APX-7500's were purchased just before I retired.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/motorola-so ... 1423270336

http://www.ems1.com/ems-products/radios ... on-market/

another link on the subject

I saw mention on another site that "Motorola sells radios for $7,000 that only cost $300 to make". Do you really think that if that's all they cost to make that the market wouldn't be flooded with $300 radios? (oh, wait, it is, they just don't work, or last, or are as reliable, or supported for very long).

It always makes me laugh how people love to pile on to try to tear down a market leader.

You can say what you want about Motorola, but I think you have to admit that almost (note I said ALMOST) every major advancement, or feature in radio for the past 40+ years, has come from Motorola and every time there was another manufacturer trying to copy it.

Motorola's not perfect, no manufacturer is, but time and time again they have proven why they are the market leader and others are followers

RFguy wrote:I saw mention on another site that "Motorola sells radios for $7,000 that only cost $300 to make". Do you really think that if that's all they cost to make that the market wouldn't be flooded with $300 radios? (oh, wait, it is, they just don't work, or last, or are as reliable, or supported for very long).

It always makes me laugh how people love to pile on to try to tear down a market leader.

You can say what you want about Motorola, but I think you have to admit that almost (note I said ALMOST) every major advancement, or feature in radio for the past 40+ years, has come from Motorola and every time there was another manufacturer trying to copy it.

Motorola's not perfect, no manufacturer is, but time and time again they have proven why they are the market leader and others are followers

I was a big fan of Motorola from yesteryear. Those guys could build you almost anything if you bought enough of them. Excellent SP team. Unfortunately many of their talented people were let go. Back in the 80's I was involved in equipment aquisition for a large agency and I was 'shocked' when we reviewed some prices, sure seemed the Spectra and Saber targeted wasteful contracts subject to little oversight or competition. Then we saw the HT600 marketed thru the Radius line as a P200 for a couple hundred less. Around the same time a M dealer in Miami ran afoul by selling export radios domestically, apparently the identical radios were being sold much cheaper to the export market. After Motorola sued him they also started changing the model names for domestic vs export radios. The GP300 became the GP88 for export, Ht600/P200's/MT1000 became P210 and Ht600e, etc. We see that today with the Waris line and all their export variations. So greed came into play when offshore customers got discounts we couldn't get here. Then a friend that dealt in cellular when they were still installed in the car units chopped Motorola as a supplier as he thought they had become too difficult to deal with.
So Motorola of yesteryear was an impressive organization that unfortunately morphed into something else. Their future in 2 way which they pretty much pioneered is apparently up for grabs.

escomm wrote:all of Symbol... he even took a $500 million bath on Symbol he wanted to get rid of it so bad

At least Honeywell has Symbol, so one mobile computing/barcode scanning & imaging company has bought another.

The speculation is that General Dynamics or Harris is eyeing MS for purchase.

Can't be Harris. No way. First, Harris just got done announcing they're buying Exelis for $4.4 billion. Second, Harris has a market capitalization of ~$8 billion. MSI's market capitalization is about $15 billion. The amount of debt Harris would have to take on in order to buy out MSI would be unserviceable.

I will give Motorola credit for putting the R&D out there for many products. Then there is the integrated circuits that are installed or used in many more products not badged as Motorola. But any company can lose their way. They are so far off these days, it forced me to go Harris and Thales for many solutions. I still give them a chance and have bought many Trbo radios in the past few years. But their customer support and lack of ethics in bidding is forcing me to Kenwood now.