I saw this coming a long time ago, when they "split" the company into two.
If this was the "old days," Motorola could survive. But they turned a blind eye to the competition, many of whom had good products in their own right, and at a much better price, and in which the rapid advancement of "technology" allowed the competition to catch-up, if not by-pass, Motorola in their radio business.
And, from the consumer's point of view: look how Motorola treats it's programming software. they make it look like it's some nuclear formula to which only a select few are allowed to look at, much less use. Meanwhile, other radio companies openly sell programming software, at a reasonable price, or even throw it in with the purchase of the radio. Why should someone buy a $5,000 radio, and then have to pay exorbitant amounts to put the frequencies in, when you can pay 20% of what a Motorola costs and have one of your friends program it at NO additional expense?
All my radios are Motorola, but I've had a working experience with Kenwood over the past few years, and was pleasantly surprised.
And with the advent of the Chinese radios being on the market (granted, no comparison to M or K), a really cheap radio that is sought by the individual radio buyer, even the second-hand market for Motorola has taken a hit (although Motorola is probably a LOT easier to program than the Chinese products).
The radio business has turned a page, but Motorola is still reading the first chapter.
My fire service career began in California in 1963. I retired in 2013. For the first 12 years of my career, Motorola was the predominant radio equipment supplier (with some GE radios scattered here and there). RCA had a few public safety systems here and there.
IMHO, Motorola made outstanding equipment and had highly competent technicians and private enterprise radio systems sales and service (RSS) people to back up their equipment.
Around 1989, Kenwood began making inroads into Motorola's market share for conventional radio systems. Motorola still had a big share of the public safety market because they had the dispatch console market cornered with their very effective Centracom products.
By 1995, Kenwood mobile radio products were becoming increasingly common for conventional systems. Motorola was doing well with their trunking systems, and government entities were essentially married to Motorola once they acquired one of their trunking systems.
The word "proprietary" came into play once Motorola trunking systems were acquired. I was the fire chief in a city that acquired an elaborate trunking system from Motorola in the 1990's before I was selected as the fire chief. About 7 years after the system was acquired, Motorola notified us that the simulcast trunking systems's radio sites would need to be replaced. The reasons were (a) the parts for system repairs normally were only guaranteed to be available for 7 years, and (b) the new equipment would be better and more reliable than the previously acquired equipment. The cost was estimated to be $28 million. That price didn't include replacing the 600+ mobile units or the 750+ portable radios. Once my employer initially purchased a Motorola trunking system, it became almost economically impossible to do anything but keep buying from Motorola.
Today, Motorola has more competition in the initial system purchase arena. Although I always felt the Motorola public safety radio products were high quality and very reliable, it became impossible for me to explain to city council members or purchasing agents why we had to buy a $3,600 Motorola portable radio instead of a $960 Kenwood model. Harris, Tait, EF Johnson, Relm, Bendix-King, Kenwood and other companies became adept at letting city officials - in hundreds of cities - know that their products were high quality at about 25-40% of what a Motorola product would cost.
Competition for dollars is intense in most cities, and I began to see Motorola system and equipment costs as being unnecessarily higher than I and others felt we could afford.
Switching an entire system from Motorola to another vendor isn't something that I've done so I can't comment on that. But, getting the funds to do that would be very difficult or impossible in a large jurisdiction.
During the last 9 years of my career, I was employed by a city that switched to Kenwood radios prior to my appointment. I became, was and still am a fan of Kenwood products with regard to conventional VHF and UHF radio systems. I haven't used any Kenwood trunking products nor have I researched if Kenwood has assumed any of Motorola's market share of trunking systems.
But, the economic realities of constricted municipal budgets is causing more cities to take a broader look at the variety of products and features that are less expensive than those sold by Motorola.
Interoperability wasn't a widely used term 20 years ago, but it is now.
IMHO, communications equipment vendors whose trunking systems accept properly configured radios produced by other manufacturers will soon corner the market. They won't push Motorola to the side of the road. Rather, Motorola's systems that don't, won't or can't accomodate non-"Big M" radios will do it.
Thanks for letting me share my thoughts on this matter.