DMR Market Heats Up with New Players

By Sandra Wendelken
The year so far has provided a flurry of activity surrounding the Digital Mobile Radio (DMR) standard, with new manufacturers joining the DMR Association and new product suites announced by several companies.

Tait Radio Communications previewed its DMR Tier 3 radio equipment at the PMRExpo in Cologne, Germany, last November. Tait’s long-awaited DMR products will be available in the second half of 2012, a company statement said.

Tait will be one of the first companies to offer products based on DMR’s Tier 3 trunked standard. Most other commercially available DMR gear is based on one of the first two tiers of the DMR standard. Tait DMR solutions will include base stations and repeaters, portables and mobiles, data modules, routers, networking equipment, applications and services, and will be integrated and configured to align with customers’ organizational requirements.

Tait executives said DMR solutions offer integrated location services, data services, over-the-air programming, network management, encryption and security features, with a stress-free migration path.

Simoco Group confirmed it will unveil its full international DMR product suite at the International Wireless Communications Expo (IWCE) in Las Vegas this month. The company first announced the product suite last year and demonstrated it at PMRExpo in Cologne, Germany, in November and then at RadioComms Connect in Australia and the Federation of Communications Services (FCS) Business Radio event in the United Kingdom in December.

Simoco’s DMR products include base stations and radio terminals. The new DMR range delivers all the benefits of the new digital standard such as enhanced audio, data over voice services and higher capacity, while offering true interoperability with other vendors’ DMR products. Simoco DMR solutions also provide a migration path for existing analog MPT 1327 installations.

Harris is expected to announce a DMR product line later this month as well. The vendor, which is the second-largest two-way radio and infrastructure manufacturer in the United States, joined the DMR Association earlier this year, along with console vendors Avtec, Omnitronics and Zetron. Last year, the DMR Association announced 12 companies had committed to manufacturing DMR-compliant products.

Also in January, Larimart, an Italian dealer in the professional and tactical communications fields, and SafeMobile, which delivers data and communications management applications, joined the association.

Motorola Solutions shipped its 1 millionth MOTOTRBO two-way radio, which is based on the DMR standard, in the third quarter last year. Hytera Communications and Vertex Standard launched DMR product lines during 2010. Selex Communications and Radio Activity also offer DMR products. All five vendors with commercially available products — Hytera, Motorola, Radio Activity, Selex and Vertex Standard — have participated in DMR interoperability tests.

All of this vendor and product activity will see the DMR market increase by more than 50 percent from 2011 to 2012, reaching more than 5 million units by 2016, said Thomas Lynch, market analyst with IMS Research. “Regionally, DMR is a worldwide phenomenon,” he said.

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Source: Radioresourcemag