The end of scanner development and mfg.

[gmclam]

Nope no one's talking, which is exactly why I started the conversation about it. I really dont think it is speculative when one major scanner retailer as pretty much called it quits. I would call that evidence of a deteriorating market. So we are beyond "speculating" . But to each their own.

You say retailer, I think you meant developer. There are a lot of moving parts here, including retailer Radio Shack virtually no longer around.

As I understand it, eventually GRE had their radios manufactured in China. Reportedly the designs were stolen. This is an issue finally being addressed by the US Government. But in the meantime it took down one of two major scanner R&D companies out there. OK, GRE's assets were sold; but I wonder the intent of the new owner. Is/was it to make a quick return on investment? Or was it to take GRE's IP and develop it further. We'd all hope the latter, but that has not come to fruition.

This is kind of a difficult market to sell to. We all want certain features and don't want to pay a huge price. But development is expensive, takes time and know-how. You have to be in it for the long-haul. I just don't see that happening other than perhaps with Uniden. But even that has its challenges.

 

[sfb88]

Does the fact that we don't see consumer scanners from the commercial (professional?) or defense manufacturers indicate that there is not sufficient opportunity for profit in this market to justify the effort?

 

[ten13]

How long will it be before cell phone PTT becomes a mainstay of public service communications?

Besides "Zello," Motorola has gotten on that bandwagon with "WAVE." Even to the point with handheld radios operating on those systems. And the cost of "WAVE" is not a prohibitive price, either. There are others.

Unlimited distance, no need to maintain an infrastructure (repeaters, antennas, etc), signal clarity, etc. What's not to like?

As I said in another post elsewhere, at some point monitoring anything worthwhile (police, fire, etc) will require the "listener" to be an actual member of some public service-related operation, either paid or volunteer, and have a radio issued to them. And even then there will be limitations and restrictions.

I think those who are chanting, "Long Live Scanners," had better wake up and realize that technology is moving faster than most of us...the average consumer....can keep up with, and public service radio manufacturers will be selling, not only the radios, but the on-air security that most public service administrators will want to have, if not demand.

Who would have thunk it 30 years ago that we'd be walking around with a hand-held communications device (which has dual operations as a telephone and PTT "radio," not to mention receiving written messages and photos) in our back pockets which is also a computer with a processor and memory bank far beyond anything we had in a desktop computer those many years ago....and a top-of-the-line camera to boot? It was unfathomable years ago.

And we haven't even discussed local or Federal regulations and restrictions limiting scanner use.

Time to find something else to do......

 

[TailGator911]

I guess if your only preferred aspect of the hobby is public safety monitoring you might see dark clouds on the horizon. If it all goes dark next week, there is still so much more to monitor besides public safety. I have tons of fun listening to milair, rails, vhf/uhf biz radios, DMR, ham bands, FRS/GMRS, hf utility radio and shortwave broadcast, etc, etc. I have a very busy desk here. Granted, what most of us monitor as a priority is local PD, fire, emt. and it will be a sad day when those coms are history, but I'm not going to pack the desk away and 'find something else to do' by no means. There are more ways to skin a cat here, if you are resourceful and know how and what to monitor.

JD
kf4anc

 

[KK2DOG]

You say retailer, I think you meant developer. There are a lot of moving parts here, including retailer Radio Shack virtually no longer around.

As I understand it, eventually GRE had their radios manufactured in China. Reportedly the designs were stolen. This is an issue finally being addressed by the US Government. But in the meantime it took down one of two major scanner R&D companies out there. OK, GRE's assets were sold; but I wonder the intent of the new owner. Is/was it to make a quick return on investment? Or was it to take GRE's IP and develop it further. We'd all hope the latter, but that has not come to fruition.

This is kind of a difficult market to sell to. We all want certain features and don't want to pay a huge price. But development is expensive, takes time and know-how. You have to be in it for the long-haul. I just don't see that happening other than perhaps with Uniden. But even that has its challenges.

From what I remember reading, the Chinese shut GRE down because they wanted the property for some other use. If I'm not mistaken, Whistler bought the rights.

 

[12dbsinad]

Scanners still have much life left, but I do believe sales is on the decline. There are many reasons for this and not all of it is E. Some is online streams, others are social media. People just simply don't need a scanner because when anything big goes down it's plastered online in about 15 seconds.

There is still a lot of rural America that still use analog and are just starting to use PL. It's all location, location, location. If you're in a City, you'll be SOL much much quicker.

 

[citiot]

KerberosSDR was mentioned earlier. Metadata in the clear with accurate direction finding... interesting.

If the mainstream manufacture(s) incorporate tweakable hobbyist controlled firmware, fancy software etc, there will still be a market. There seems to be a subset of hobbyists who like to analyze logs, experiment with "passive radar", etc.

 

[a29zuk]

I know bringing up the E word is touchy around here. I was hoping the thread wouldn't get closed.

I know you can listen to railroads, milair, etc., but public safety is the meat and potatoes of scanning for me. I was trying to use facts from the Michigan system to show how social media is affecting it. I used to monitor the scanner everyday but now that I can't hear PS anymore, I may turn it on once or twice a week to listen to EMS and some fire calls. Heck, I used to tease everyone that I don't watch reality TV, I listen to reality radio!

I been listening to scanners since the early 70's when my dad had a Bearcat 3 scanner. In the 80's I had a Regency scanner but ever since then I have buying Uniden scanners. Now I don't see a reason to purchase another scanner(I'll never say never, though), as I think the MPSCS will be here for a while. If a listener of scanners for over 45 years quits buying scanners, I didn't think this was too off topic. And if there are more longtime listeners like me that quit buying scanners, I do believe this does affect the research and development of newer scanners.

Now I find myself back to where I started back in the late 60's. Listening to MW and HF on many nights. I'm glad they have forums here on RR for those, too.

Jim

 

[spacellamaman]

Yep. By all rights, it should. In the last two days, I've heard F15's meet up with tankers, heard NORAD flights protecting POTUS, and a railroad engineer (or conductor?) reading dirty limericks over the air. That's pretty damned interesting, and none of it involved encryption.

as that is a perfect example of my interests in scanners, and make it worthwhile for me, it seems we are in the minority, in general and amongst scanner users specifically. this leads to questions of commercial viability i fear, but its hard to say to what degree because:

Nope no one's talking, which is exactly why I started the conversation about it. I really dont think it is speculative when one major scanner retailer as pretty much called it quits. I would call that evidence of a deteriorating market. So we are beyond "speculating" . But to each their own.

does anyone have even a vague, ball park, or educated guess as to unit sales? i have never seen anything, period. yearly sales, all models, mfg's etc? sales are enough to justify local walmarts keeping WS1010's in stock, but its the same one that was there a year earlier. northern tool, as recently as two years ago had the uniden 365crs on shelves, but no longer. as far as local retailers, thats where my list begins and ends post-RS.

i am guessing that total unit sales, all models, are between 50,000-100,000 but only because anything lower would seem hardly possible to make a profit with. but as soon as i re-read that line i can only wonder if that isn't way too low considering the number of current production models and what level of sales would be needed to justify setting up production lines for each.

does anyone have anything solid regarding unit sales, even old or multi year numbers?



as a side note, reading this entire thread has further reinforced one aspect. how much this industry has its future resting in the hands of one man, UPMan.

 

[riccom]

UPMAN is a good man from what i have seen of him, he has alot on his hands right now and radio and scanners right now is not one of them.
actually if you think about it, its up to us, we have a say when we buy or not, and i think there is a good demand for the scanner market to still keep going.
think about it, without scanners, there would not be online scanners, or any rail fanning, or air show insites, and most of all, link to our community.
and there would not be a radio reference.
Do i think this hobby is going down, No, it has declined, but its far from dead.
alot of fire departments still are not encrypted, and small departments, and encryption, is a phase, i think we will have more open comms soon,
but i digress on the E department, i am a fan of fire and some police comms, i don't care for the ncic or plate checks or a barking dog complaint.
and that 90% of calls.

 

[trentbob]

Yep. By all rights, it should. In the last two days, I've heard F15's meet up with tankers, heard NORAD flights protecting POTUS, and a railroad engineer (or conductor?) reading dirty limericks over the air. That's pretty damned interesting, and none of it involved encryption.

And if it's encryption you want to hear, then all I can say is stay in school, kids. Some of us have "company" issued radios that can listen to everything. A DUI bust or domestic abuse case will keep you out of that world forever. Stay clean, stay in school, and you can listen to some pretty cool stuff.

I guess if your only preferred aspect of the hobby is public safety monitoring you might see dark clouds on the horizon. If it all goes dark next week, there is still so much more to monitor besides public safety. I have tons of fun listening to milair, rails, vhf/uhf biz radios, DMR, ham bands, FRS/GMRS, hf utility radio and shortwave broadcast, etc, etc. I have a very busy desk here. Granted, what most of us monitor as a priority is local PD, fire, emt. and it will be a sad day when those coms are history, but I'm not going to pack the desk away and 'find something else to do' by no means. There are more ways to skin a cat here, if you are resourceful and know how and what to monitor.

JD
kf4anc

I do agree with both you guys. JD we see things alike on so many topics and zz I think we agreed on something last year but I don't remember what it was hahaha.

If our local PDs go dark, there is certainly a lot to monitor and I enjoy monitoring that now along with Public Safety with a good antenna Farm.

I monitor specific Marine, Aviation, Forestry, my local hospital security etc etc.

If I was to lose local police dispatch things will change drastically for me. I'm not saying I wouldn't once in awhile listen to my scanners on something like we had last weekend when an old tall sailing ship come up the Delaware and docked in my hometown for a festival. I followed it through all the bridge openings.

If I was to lose PD Dispatch things would definitely change for me and instead of listening 24 hours a day I would treat my radios more like I did my shortwave radio when I was a kid. Once in awhile I would do SWL for kicks.

I do think that Uniden is going to continue R&D and we will see improved radios in the future. And yes zz a new line of radios every 5 years is a reasonable amount of time.

JD I know that you had left the hobby and are now back into it and enjoying it. If you lost your local PD Dispatch I know you would continue to have fun!

 

[Firekite]

All this talk about manufacturers producing units that can handle encryption and legislation and so on is kind of moot. Even if the laws were changed to decriminalize decryption of encrypted radio traffic, it doesn’t matter. The whole point of encryption is to keep you from listening, and even putting massive amounts of computing power against a recorded snippet would be unlikely to decrypt it, much less in a scanner. And even if a method were available to crack it, all they’d have to do is upgrade their cryptography, and you’re back out in the cold.

The only legislation that would address the issue is a law forbidding publicly funded radio systems from utilizing encryption at all. And I think we all know that’s not going to happen. Maybe at an individual state level, but that would be a shocking development and definitely an exception case regardless.

 

[frazpo]

as that is a perfect example of my interests in scanners, and make it worthwhile for me, it seems we are in the minority, in general and amongst scanner users specifically. this leads to questions of commercial viability i fear, but its hard to say to what degree because:



does anyone have even a vague, ball park, or educated guess as to unit sales? i have never seen anything, period. yearly sales, all models, mfg's etc? sales are enough to justify local walmarts keeping WS1010's in stock, but its the same one that was there a year earlier. northern tool, as recently as two years ago had the uniden 365crs on shelves, but no longer. as far as local retailers, thats where my list begins and ends post-RS.

i am guessing that total unit sales, all models, are between 50,000-100,000 but only because anything lower would seem hardly possible to make a profit with. but as soon as i re-read that line i can only wonder if that isn't way too low considering the number of current production models and what level of sales would be needed to justify setting up production lines for each.

does anyone have anything solid regarding unit sales, even old or multi year numbers?



as a side note, reading this entire thread has further reinforced one aspect. how much this industry has its future resting in the hands of one man, UPMan.

YES!! That was one reason I started this thread?!!! Will it remain worth the money they make? But we have no idea. Great question.

 

[ten13]

If our local PDs go dark, there is certainly a lot to monitor and I enjoy monitoring that now along with Public Safety with a good antenna Farm.

I monitor specific Marine, Aviation, Forestry, my local hospital security etc etc.

That may be true, but will there be enough "Listeners" (i.e. "Buyers") to make the development of limited-use radios profitable? I would think that that discussion is taking place, or has taken place, in companies like Uniden, etc. If the demand is not there, capitalism, and 'profit and loss,' makes the decision as to whether to continue the putting a lot of money into on-going scanner development.

And if they DO continue the development and manufacturing, who, as a consumer, is going to have the money to buy something that inherently has limited use, which the company will have to charge a great deal for to make the profit?

Not too many, I would imagine.

 

[sfb88]

I just thought of something that may provide encouragement about the future of scanning. The price may increase but they should be available. My example is amateur radio. There are a number of manufacturers still developing and providing ham equipment. The total market for ham radios has to be smaller than for scanners since hams must be licensed. I can use myself as an example. I have a few scanners but I am not a ham. I suspect there are many more like me. Therefore, if manufacturers can support the smaller ham community logic would indicate that the scanner community can be supported.

 

[frazpo]

I just thought of something that may provide encouragement about the future of scanning. The price may increase but they should be available. My example is amateur radio. There are a number of manufacturers still developing and providing ham equipment. The total market for ham radios has to be smaller than for scanners since hams must be licensed. I can use myself as an example. I have a few scanners but I am not a ham. I suspect there are many more like me. Therefore, if manufacturers can support the smaller ham community logic would indicate that the scanner community can be supported.

Very good point. And yes, the hobbies do relate. I'm a ham, but actually do more scanning then hamming.

 

[radio3353]

If I was to lose local police dispatch things will change drastically for me. I'm not saying I wouldn't once in awhile listen to my scanners on something like we had last weekend when an old tall sailing ship come up the Delaware and docked in my hometown for a festival. I followed it through all the bridge openings.

You know Bob, if you lived one county to the west that is exactly the situation you would have once their new Phase 2 system goes on line in a few months. It's creeping up on you because the police chiefs in your county have already gone on record as wanting E. They just haven't gotten it yet. A new county administration could change that. And that big city next to you is seriously thinking E. They really despise on-line streaming of their comms.

 

[gmclam]

From what I remember reading, the Chinese shut GRE down because they wanted the property for some other use. If I'm not mistaken, Whistler bought the rights.

And I haven't seen any true new development from Whistler. They canceled development of their most promising scanner. Perhaps they realize the huge investment of dollars and time it takes before seeing a profit. The technology they purchased is largely out-of-date now considering things like issues with receiving from multicast systems.

 

[trentbob]

You know Bob, if you lived one county to the west that is exactly the situation you would have once their new Phase 2 system goes on line in a few months. It's creeping up on you because the police chiefs in your county have already gone on record as wanting E. They just haven't gotten it yet. A new county administration could change that. And that big city next to you is seriously thinking E. They really despise on-line streaming of their comms.

Oh yes, you are right on the money and you know that I know all about it. The county to the West you speak of have made their decision for a very specific reason. You are very perceptive, but you didn't hear that from me.

My County, Bucks County made their decision to be in the clear. But you know about Ops 1 through 8, each Zone has its own dark option.

My particular police chief who I've spoken with about the topic is only new for the last few years. He comes from Toms River where he was a supervisor.

In my town with barricaded subjects, drive by shootings and Federal Marshals and the FBI always chasing down Public Enemy Number One he is very quick to switch to... Ops 1. The funny part is most of the cops don't know how to make that happen with their apx7000s, hahaha. half of them are on one channel and the other are on the other channel. Its funny.

Once again I do think that Uniden and unication are going to stay in the game and develop better options for all of us who will jump on the opportunity to buy it.

As things change there will still be... a profitable consumer Market worthy of good R&D making a better product.

 

[scannersnstuff]

I think the bottom line will be if police/fire become unmoniterable, the scanner market will no longer be self sustaining. I would like to run out and buy a Whistler ws-1040 , just for milair, if encryption on public safety get's any worse. Not into listening to railroads and taxi cab's.