I think that's wildly optimistic. First, many, many licensed amateurs
aren't active and don't own a rig at all. Another very large fraction
buy only VHF/UHF gear. And, I don't know whether your figure of 700k
hams with U.S. licenses includes the large number who are residents of
other countries and also have licenses in those countries. Many of the
foreign hams I hear from give a U.S. callsign along with their native one.

I think the only reason we get the radios we do is that the
manufacturers can combine the design with equipment for other markets,
such as public safety for HTs. I've read that the lack of 220 MHz HTs is
because of the absence of a nearby public service band, so the
manufacturers can't use the same design for both services. I find that
believable. I don't know how important additional markets are to HF
equipment development, or what they would be these days. My guess is
that the manufacturers don't make an awful lot on their HF equipment lines.

In any case, the total market, particularly for HF gear, is surely much
less than this estimate.

Roy Lewallen, W7EL

Dee Flint wrote:

Nope the entire world wide population of hams is NOT enough. The US has
just under 700,000. Japan has somewhere around 1 million (there numbers are
hard to determine due to their licensing system). The remainder of the
world combined has right around the same total of the US. This gives a
worldwide ham population of under 2.5 million. So starting from that
rough estimate, let's look at some figures. Very, very few people buy a new
HF rig annually. Just using the people I know, it's more like every 5 to 10
years. So let's use an average of 7.5 years. That means a total of 333,000
new radios (rounding off the answer) sold in any given year. Now split that
between 3 makers, yielding 111,000 units per maker. That's pretty low
volume to undertake radical development. We're probably lucky that we get
any new features.

Dee D. Flint, N8UZE