If I were buying multi thousand dollar radio equipment today, I would buy Elecraft. Sadly, Ten Tec may well be gone before long (acquired by yet another company in less than a year). I bought some of their first products, the PowerMite QRP rigs way back when. In the eyes of some, after leading the QRP revolution they tried to compete with bigger companies and never really managed to sustain the innovative edge. Indeed, they started lagging behind while still charging a stiff price for their rigs (the Orion 1 should never have been brought to market with a monochrome screen when the competition was already doing color). I sat in the demo room at their factory and listened to a former product development manager try to persuade me to buy one, which I didn't, based on the fact that TT didn't see the need for the color monitor and could pass the price savings on to the customer. He vowed they wouldn't go color as it added nothing to the radio's capability. Well, he was soon gone and they did go color with the Orion 2.
Elecraft needs to evaluate their market and decide if they can survive marketing K3SX,Y, or Z incremental improvements verses leading with innovative, exciting products. I suspect most of use K3 owners will sit tight with what we have. Which in a way is bad for Elecraft business. ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html Message delivered to arch...@mail-archive.com
