For over a decade now Motorola Talkabout radios have been designed, manufactured, marketed and distributed by a company called Giant International. Giant International is a Motorola Solutions brand licensee, which essentially means that they are allowed to sell Motorola branded products in exchange for a percentage of the sales. Motorola has maintained some control over how the products look and are marketed, but Giant has been in charge of the Motorola Talkabout line of radios in most every way. This is about to change.
Motorola Solutions has decided to take over research and development of the FRS/GMRS radio line. This means that in the future, new models of Motorola branded FRS and GMRS radios will have been designed internally at Motorola. So what does this mean for the Talkabout line? Unfortunately we don't have any solid answers. Motorola certainly has a lot of experience designing radios, so we're hoping that this will be a positive step for the product line. Giant is the largest FRS/GMRS radio manufacturer in the world, however, and they know this industry better than anyone. In anticipation of this change, Giant recently launched their own line of FRS/GMRS two way radios under their Olympia brand.
Change is in the air for the Motorola Talkabout. It is certainly not a given that this change will be a good one.
