Anyone else see this? Motorola buys Yaesu

[ntsqd]

SB SPCL @ ARL $ARLX007
ARLX007 Motorola buys Yaesu

ZCZC AX07
QST de W1AW
Special Bulletin 7 ARLX007
>From ARRL Headquarters
Newington CT November 5, 2007
To all radio amateurs

SB SPCL ARL ARLX007
ARLX007 Motorola buys Yaesu

Motorola USA has announced its intention to launch a tender offer to
acquire a controlling interest in Vertex Standard Co, Ltd. Vertex
Standard is the parent company of Yaesu. Motorola will own 80
percent of Vertex Standard; Tokogiken, a privately held Japanese
company, controlled by current president and CEO of Vertex Standard
Jun Hasegawa, will retain 20 percent, forming a joint venture. The
total purchase price for 80 percent of the outstanding shares on a
fully diluted basis will be approximately US $108 million.

[edgear]

Quite interesting indeed...

[cruiseroutfit]

Wow, I hope they don't diminish the quality of the consumer goods... I'm fairly new to the HAM scene. Has Motorola ever been a player in the HAM market? 2-Way radios are obviously second nature for Motorola, interesting they would want Yaesu? Am I missing something?

[DaveInDenver]

Has Motorola ever been a player in the HAM market?

This is sort of like asking whether or not Ford had anything to do with assembly lines or does the Pope wear funny hats. You'll find Motorola and GE gear pretty much at every repeater site and Motorola FM radios used to be everywhere back in the 60s and 70s (you still see hams using liberated Motorola business radios once in awhile). But in terms of marketing to hams, not as much. A lot of stuff was and is old VHF commercial gear that's been reused and modified for ham more than sold as such in the beginning.

2-Way radios are obviously second nature for Motorola, interesting they would want Yaesu? Am I missing something?

Motorola made radios and infrastructure products (and to a very large extent still does) for government, commercial and emergency uses. They got left behind in ham when companies like Yeasu, Icom and Kenwood began to make the fancy band nimble, wide band RX radios we have now. My guess is the move might be to increase Motorola's coverage of consumer radios, but mostly I'd guess it's to get more market share for commercial radios. Vertex Standard is a pretty big competitor to Motorola in that market and the combination of the two would be a market force. I'm not sure if Motorola wants to be in the ham business or not, though they might roll the FRS toy stuff they make into an expanded ham, GMRS, FRS 2-way business. I do doubt that Yeasu and the ham market really have much influence on this decision by Motorola, it's probably mostly the commercial side that is the driving reason.

[HenryJ]

I am not real happy with Motorolas "secretive" policy. Only a dealer is entitled to information. Wiring diagrams, programming information , software. I had way too many hoops to jump through and had to get set up with a dealer account to acomplish want I needed to.
Yaesu / Vertex has been outstanding. I would also suggest that Relm / BK has been a good source.
Maybe Motorola will lighten up a little? I understand protecting their dealers, but that really turns me off. I think they are losing business to others for this reason.

[Intruder]

I'm new at this, but my guess is they plan on running Icom and Midland into the ground so they'll have a near monopoly on a huge portion of the two-way market.

Very interesting.

[pskhaat]

I thought it would have been significantly more than $108M to take 80% share.

[adventureduo]

Wow.

[DaveInDenver]

I thought it would have been significantly more than $108M to take 80% share.

Motorola had about $37 billion in sales for 2007 (down from $43 billion in 2006). The Enterprise Mobility division (the part that's acquiring Vertex) of Motorola had sales of about $7.7 billion in 2007, which is about a 35% growth over 2006. Keep in mind that this division does not only the radios but RFID, sales kiosks, bar coding systems and wireless networks. Not to mention all the service and support contracts.

Vertex Standard did about $206 million in sales in their last reported year (through March 31, 2007). Vertex Standard is not a huge company like Motorola, they just do land mobile radios, portable radios, some GPS marine gear and wireless data terminals. The Yeasu ham stuff is 29% of their business, data terminals about 3% and commercial stuff is the rest.

BTW, last year Vertex Standard profited about $6 million and Motorola lost about $50 million (although the Enterprise Mobility division seems to have been profitable even if the company as a whole was not).