"KH6HZ" wrote in message
...
"Dee Flint" wrote:

Market saturation is a fact that all retail manufacturer's face. And they
deal with it.

Yes, with planned obsolescence.

Not exactly the same thing in ham radio, nor can we really deal with it
the same way.

73
kh6hz

Although our approach will of necessity have to be different, we still must
face the equivalent of market saturation. Not everyone is going to be
interested in amateur radio no matter what we do and on top of that our
general population growth is very slow. These issues must be considered
when devising a strategy. Look at how many people believed and still
believe that Morse code kept people out. They think there is a huge number
of people just waiting in the wings chomping at the bit to become hams
without having to take a code test. I'll certainly be happy and excited if
that happens but let's say it doesn't (and I think it won't). What then
will people propose? Will they continue to ignore concepts like market
saturation as one potentially relevant issue? Will they continue to ignore
the concept that not everyone is interested in the types of things that
amateur radio can do?

We've probably got another several years until the "cell phone substitute"
hams are, for the most part, gone. That's several years still of decline.
With the relatively low cost of cell phones these days, we will get no more
recruits from this approach although we have kept a few that came in this
way.

The decline in CB enthusiasts is also reducing another potential source of
recruits.

This actually leads to the major reason for my little guessing game on the
growth of amateur radio without a code test. If my prediction is wrong and
we have a huge growth, I'll be happy and readily admit that I was wrong. If
the growth doesn't happen, perhaps people will wake up and realize that
changing requirements won't address the issue. Perhaps they will realize
that it is a recruitment and marketing issue rather than requirements.

Dee, N8UZE