Calling amateur radio operators: Motorola is buying Yaesu

There’s a good chance that Yaesu, one of the best manufacturers of amateur (“ham”) radio equipment, may be disappearing soon.

I’ve been a proud owner of many Yaesu tabletop radios, from shortwave receivers to HF transceivers. My favorite HT (handi-talki is the ham version of “walkie-talkie”) is a Yaesu VX-5R triple-band. (The VX-5R, pictured, was discontinued in late 2005. The closest current model is the VX-6R.)

It looks like Yaesu, and its parent company Vertex Standard, are going to be swallowed up by mighty Motorola. You can read the full Motorola press release here.

Like Vertex Standard, Motorola is a big player in the two-way radio market. However, Motorola hasn’t done anything in the amateur radio market for many years.

The press release briefly mentions Vertex’s strengths in amateur, and says that the deal will give Motorola access to new business opportunities. That would be wonderful news, though it would seem unlikely that the giant Motorola would have any real use for the Yaesu niche amateur-radio products. It’s not a large market, and it’s not growing.

If Motorola is willing to continue investing in Yaesu – and can use its manufacturing and distribution clout to lower prices and add new dealers, that would be great.

Otherwise, the best we can hope for would be that another ham radio player, like Kenwood or Icom, would purchase the Yaesu product line. However, because many of Yaesu amateur radios are derivative of higher-volume Vertex commercial radios, it’s not clear how that would work.