[aprssig] NEW! IC-V82 - VHF/APRS Transceiver

[Rich Garcia]

That is probably because there are potential sales in what I would guess
10's of K in the marine market while they have a potential sale of
a few thousand in the ham market ?

I know you are a boater Joe from your previous posts, how many boats are
estimated to be out in the US right now? I would say if there are records
how many that are registered as 16ft or larger, that is the best guess I
would say to have a console hence a radio and GPS mounted. Then if we take
the number of ACTIVE hams then find out which ones actually use the VHF/UHF
bands we can have an idea of the potential Marine vs. Ham market for such a
beast.

Don't get me wrong...I think that Icom has no excuse at all. It should not
be all that expensive to cross breed some of their DSC radios with ham rigs
and turn a profit. Having Kenwood or some of the other ham brands out there
that do not already have such a radio in the marine market may prove to be a
bit too expensive to turn a profit on the ham market. But hey...Kenwood has
the D700 as a good platform. If Kenwood would just make some changes to the
platform and then add just a few more features it may be good enough to buy
in my eyes. Who knows...

Bottom line is that Amateur Radio does not have a large enough market share
to support the continued support from the "Big 3" with new features in their
radios, AND there are just not enough of us and not enough of us willing to
spend big dollars often enough to support it. You will get the occasional
ham that will buy the radio of the month but they are not large enough of a
group to make the $$$. I got more HT's than I know what to do with and the
last one I bought was about 8 years ago. Last mobile I got was a APRS only
rig 3 years ago since it was only $125 and my other one got fried, PRICE
POINT makes it a no brainier but my last Dual Bander was over 5 years ago.


Rich

-----Original Message-----
From: aprssig-bounces at lists.tapr.org
[mailto:aprssig-bounces at lists.tapr.org]On Behalf Of Joe Della Barba
Sent: Wednesday, March 02, 2005 8:03 PM
To: TAPR APRS Mailing List
Subject: Re: [aprssig] NEW! IC-V82 - VHF/APRS Transceiver


The brochure says NOTHING about APRS, only that the radios can exchange
position by sending NMEA data to each other. This radio also does NOT have a
GPS built in. Does anyone know why it is that no one will make a modern APRS
radio? Why can I buy a marine VHF with a built in moving map/gps and DSC
position polling but Icom and Kenwood can't figure out putting a GPS in a
radio when every cell phone will soon have one?
73 de Joe N3HGB


_______________________________________________
aprssig mailing list
aprssig at lists.tapr.org
https://lists.tapr.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/aprssig