Are we seeing the final death throws of a once great company?

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Boatanchor

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Sadly, I bring no good news to this thread.

If you are looking for a 'happy, 'feel good' reading experience, stop now and go elsewhere...

For the curious amongst you, all of the following information is available from public sites.

Come to your own conclusions.

Links

UNIDEN CORP (6815:Tokyo): Financial Statements - Businessweek

And maybe most telling of all, from local (ex) employee perspectives:

Uniden Reviews | Glassdoor

Will Uniden be around long enough to sort out the x36HP woes?

It's not looking promising.
 

Nasby

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Who would have thought that Radio Shack and Whistler seem to have brighter futures than Uniden?
 

scannersnstuff

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the funny/not so funny side to this,is i was just about to post my commentary to the 436/536 woe's thread. i found this to be a more appropriate thread.
come on folk's, don't you see the big picture of what's happening here ?. since the release of the 436/536 scanner's, that fail miserably imho, uniden has pushed out 3 new/not so new scanner's. they have pretty much avoided putting much of anything into the release of fixes for the 436/536. so glad i didn't rush into getting them. uniden came out with the bcd996p2,bcd325p2 and the home patrol 2. what these 3 scanner's basically did was to address the p25 phase 2 decoding aspect. i do not see any sign's of anything else being added over the older bcd996xt and home patrol 1. they took the same case as the inexpensive bc125at, and stuffed the 325 p2 into it. do you want to carry around an expensive scanner in that case ?. even marshall, who used to be unidens biggest fan boy has basically stopped championing for them. uniden saw a way to make some quick buck's on the p25 phase 2 upgrades. just like they rushed the 436/536 to market to beat whistlers new offering's. i have not seen anywhere near the amount of unhappy post's about whistlers, that i do about uniden. yes, i think uniden, and the scanner industry in general are circling the drain. regarding upman <paul> not saying much about the situation, he is basically controled by uniden about what he posts/does not post. it's akin to having the band keep playing while the titanic is sinking !. sorry, i don't see good things coming for this relatively niche market.
 
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hojomojo34

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It's a pretty simple thing. I was in the market for a new desktop scanner. I researched my choices. I saw so many complaints about the 536 from the time it came out to the present. That told me something - Uniden was not interested in or unable to address the issues. They made my choice for me. I had to go with Whistler. I already have a 396xt. I wanted to stay with Uniden, but they're asking customers to drop $500 for something that clearly does not work right. This is just disrespectful to the customer. Needless to say, they didn't ring up a sale from me. And apparently there are plenty of others just like me. Paricularly, in a niche market there is no room for this kind of thing. They are literally driving their customers to the competition. I sincerely hope they stick around. Competition is important in getting better products to market and I would buy from them again IF they turn they turn it around.
 

SOFA_KING

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Some of you actually sound like you want them to fail. I see no reason for them to fail IF THEY DO THINGS RIGHT. By taking shortcuts and skipping QA, they put themselves at risk. I think that is what Uniden did, and it is almost totally out of control now with all the damage they did TO THEMSELVES.

I really want them to get back on the ball and get back on track. I like many of the innovations they brought to us, such as Location Control. They just need to focus on the QA measures that will prevent such disastrous fallout before releasing a product. Forget "beta testers". You can't expect amateurs to do the job of a professional. Do it the proven way that works. Then give the customers what they want.

I love scanners, and I get much pleasure out of using the good ones. I want Uniden to stick around and Whistler to continue. I support them both, but for God's sake, get a grip on your quality issues.

Phil
 

trentbob

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Interesting...

... that might explain why they are responding so inappropriately to the many x36 issues... their actions (or lack of) are not consistent with a company who wants to protect their reputation and insure future sales to people like me (use for work)... it's sad, I've been using Uniden since they took over Electra in '74... Bob...
 

scannersnstuff

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i just want to make myself perfectly clear. i do not want to see any scanner mfg. fail. just like it was very hard to see radioshack go under. and though i've said it before. i'm not solely dedicated to any one brand of scanner, i mostly end up buying and using unidens. it just seem's that the bcd396/996xt and the bc125at were the last of the really reliable unidens.
 
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Anyone (obviously, external to Uniden) know what percentage of these figures are from their scanner business? We can't blame everything on "x36HP woes". Uniden also produces CB radios, radar detectors, cordless phones, marine and other two way radios.
 

frazpo

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It probably doesn't help that 22k people that are interested in listening to scanner traffic are logged onto Broadcastify right now and listening for free.

Whether even half of them are potential scanner consumers could be argued all day. However there is really no doubt that this does not help Uniden or any other scanner company.
 

AA6IO

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Certainly not good at all. May explain why have not heard much from UPMan lately on a lot of issues. On any upcoming threads about delays in the x36HP features, problems with display, RTC, and so on, people should be referred to UNIDEN CORP (6815:Tokyo): Financial Statements - Businessweek
The issue with the stubborn president sounds just like the experience I reported with the AR-DV1, my comments to Taka, and the response from the president (see various AR-DV1 threads).
Ansul1001, $40 million would certainly be a nice salary/take-home for you or I, but for a large company like Uniden, its really not good. Had their numbers doubled to $40 million over the last few years. But that downward trend certainly does not look good.
Thanks for the uplifting news Boatanchor. But it is what it is. Does anyone think now we will seeing a NXDN/DMR scanner from Uniden? Read Businessweek. Does not sound promising.
 

wise871

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I hate to see them go because competition and having a choice is good for everyone. They brought this on themselves. A lot of this could have been prevented. I'm sure sales of the new scanners after the x36 line up did not sale as high as they could have if the x36 series worked as they were supposed to.
 

blantonl

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It probably doesn't help that 22k people that are interested in listening to scanner traffic are logged onto Broadcastify right now and listening for free.

Whether even half of them are potential scanner consumers could be argued all day. However there is really no doubt that this does not help Uniden or any other scanner company.

Well, with 5,200 feeds that's 5,200 radios that the manufacturers sold...
 

SOFA_KING

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This "top down" micro-management business model everyone appears to be adopting just doesn't work. Add to that the "greed factor" being demanded by the stock markets, and you have a recipe for disaster for any company that embraces such practices as suicidal as ignoring good talent and what they can contribute, hiring unqualified people because it is cheaper, and cheating so you can try to recover some profits from the first two big mistakes I just mentioned. We are seeing many companies failing for the same reasons.

Reading what the employees posted points right to that as the problem. I kinda feel for UPMan now. Good dude, I always thought. Couldn't understand why he resisted on some suggestions. I think we can see now what was going on behind the scenes.

Sad...truly sad.
 

SCPD

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You'd be better off saving and just investing in a kenwood or icom low end unit to monitor nxdn. I doubt you will see it in a scanner anytime within the next 10 years.
 

wise871

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Maybe one day when Paul is no longer working for Uniden he can tell us all about it.


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