This is not good news for the hobby.
When the largest vendor decides to sell, they see something wrong ahead.
They are reaching for the parachute because it's time to cash this one out.
From the business aspect they are valued at around 15 times earnings. This is a typical valuation.
Why would they want to sell?
Re-banding and narrow-banding practically replaced every radio in the country.
After that, where is the growth?
Radio has become a commodity with scratchy walkie talkies on one end with P25 on the other.
Two way radio can't hold a candle to the functionality of todays smart phone. I know phones are NOT mission critical, save the flames, but the functionality differences between phones and two way are becoming more apparent as time goes on. The way people communicate is changing in ways I could have never imagined. I don't think people are aspiring to two way, although it is effective for one to many messages.
What about first net and broadband, perhaps Motorola saw that as what's next and they may not be part of it.
Finally, I read a recent article that the FCC would like to consolidate PSAP's to like three for the whole country. While that is quite absurd, these are all things Motorola might see as reasons to cash out.
It is only a hobby to me, and smartphones are killing my hobby.
THE KING IS DEAD, LONG LIVE THE KING!
The ruggedness of a smartphone has been debated in many forums, but in essence, very, very few of the engineers and talking heads who are promoting the matter have ever put on an SCBA. The ones who have, tend to gather in a hotel every quarter and try to hammer out standards-making on the feature set.
What's going on? First, narrowbanding pushed everyone to buy entirely new stuff. That was at the urging of the manufacturers who lobbied hard for the FCC to prohibit simply cranking down the deviation and installing tighter receiver filters. There was absolutely no reason in the world why that would not work for analog FM, aside from the fact that it was a manufactured crisis and the manufacturer in question had the shiny path worn into the carpet at the Portals II. Load has been blown to replace perfectly good equipment with brand new equipment that is functionally no different, and perhaps more limiting. The net effect of narrowbanding on VHF (where it was needed most) was negligible.
Second, the industry and user organizations pushed hard for the D Block and portrayed it as the end-all of needs. The politicians bit - so hard that they demanded a giveback of T-Band from the spectrum neediest of areas. The manufacturers (I'm speaking mostly of one) put up a lukewarm front for this, because they see this as an opportunity to forklift nearly-new T-Band systems for completely new 700 MHz systems, often requiring additional sites and engineering to assure performance to par.
I blame the contemporary desire to make a quick buck at the expense of strategic planning. In fact, I might be as bold to assert that nearly all modern managers have zero ability to develop a strategy and the only thing they know how to do is keep playing Three Card Monte to deliver stupid revenue tricks.
They tanked because they milked the lizard that feeds them once too many times.
The FCC doesn't have the authority to compel there be only three PSAPs in the nation. The idea is also an idiot's delight. One only need appreciate the value of locality when a county can't make calls from one side to another because a fiberoptic cable was dug up in Oklahoma, some 500 miles away.
