Yes, Kenwood has rebranded an ICOM DStar radio for sale in Japan, and only Japan as far as I know. I was talking about Kenwood USA, and the fact that there is one and only manufacturer offering DStar radios to the US market.
The good news is that increasingly there are non-ICOM alternatives for access points and repeaters. My own opinion is that these new options will spur additional growth in DStar, and this growth is likely to be good both for ICOM and Ham Radio. Jim - K6JM ----- Original Message ----- From: Woodrick, Ed To: dstar_digital@yahoogroups.com Sent: Wednesday, March 17, 2010 7:12 PM Subject: RE: [DSTAR_DIGITAL] Re: Alternative D-STAR Equipment Let's get some details correct. Icom is NOT the only manufacturer of D-STAR radios. Before the JARL would ratify the protocol, there had to be two manufacturers. Kenwood is the other manufacturer (okay, in reality they resale the Icom radio, but legally there are two manufacturers) Kenwood's and Icom's commercial digital product is based upon D-STAR. From: dstar_digital@yahoogroups.com [mailto:dstar_digi...@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of J. Moen Sent: Wednesday, March 17, 2010 3:31 PM To: dstar_digital@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [DSTAR_DIGITAL] Re: Alternative D-STAR Equipment A couple of years ago, I talked to a Kenwood manager who discussed Kenwood's approach to DStar. Short term, there are some tactical issues. Right now, some agencies (e.g. Emergency Centers that want some Ham gear in there) with government grants are required to follow federal procurement rules, including not buying single-source or single-manufacturer products. So if Kenwood entered the DStar market, it would make it easier for ICOM to sell to certain customers where right now Kenwood has the edge. Longer term, Kenwood's business model is to focus on products with a reasonable margin, and they are not interested in entering a new market and seeing a price war that would reduce traditional margins. So in the meantime, Kenwood is willing to let ICOM do the heavy lifting to get DStar into the mainstream. There's no way of telling if, in future years, Kenwood, Yaesu and others will decide to jump in. I believe Kenwood's commercial land/mobile business includes P25 radios, and I suspect they were hoping DStar would fall on its face and allow Kenwood to jump in with an alternative digital voice system for amateur radio. It doesn't look to me like that's going to happen, and that ICOM is largely being successful in making DStar an important amateur radio technology. Jim - K6JM
