What Will Become of Fluke's New Product Lines?
Martin Rowe, Senior Technical Editor -- Test & Measurement World, 1/1/2000
With the purchase of Wavetek Wandel Golterman's (WWG) Precision Measurements Division, Fluke takes its place as the undisputed king of calibration. For years, Fluke and Wavetek—Datron before the Wavetek buyout in 1992—-competed against each other in the multifunction calibrator business. The competition was sometimes bitter, with one company often disputing how well the other's products worked. That now comes to an end, and the calibrator market now consists of Fluke and several smaller competitors.
The Wavetek/Datron name that engineers know well won't vanish right away. Fluke has the rights to sell the calibration products under the Wavetek/Datron name for three years. According to Fluke, the company plans to continue to keep the UK-based operation and its product line indefinitely. No doubt that will happen for three years, but after that, I wonder if Fluke will consolidate product lines while continuing to support all of the former Wavetek/Datron products. With the Fluke purchase of WWG's Precision Measurements Division comes an 8½-digit precision DMM (model 1281) used in many calibration labs. The DMM acquisition rounds out Fluke's line of DC and low-frequency calibration equipment, and it now competes with Agilent's 3458 8½-digit DMM. Fluke also inherits Portocal software, which competes with Fluke's popular MET/CAL software. Isuspect that Fluke will try to move Portocal users to MET/CAL to avoid developing and supporting two software packages. Fluke is well known for its high quality (and equally pricey) handheld DMMs. The acquisition of the WWG Test Tools line, according to Fluke, gives the company a broader line of handheld DMMs. Fluke intends to continue to market, sell, and support the acquired line of DMMs using the Wavetek name. Fluke manufactures its DMM's in Everett, WA, but WWG purchases its handheld DMMs from an outside manufacturer. I can't see Fluke continuing to sell a line of DMM's that the company doesn't make. Therefore, I expect Fluke to eventually discontinue or sell the acquired line of DMMs, but that may take several years. As part of the deal, Fluke also acquired some products that are new to the company. WWG manufactured a few VXIbus products such as a DMM. Fluke has never been in the VXI business, and I doubt it wants to be in that market at all. Fluke says that it plans to continue to sell and support the acquired VXIbus products, but I doubt it will for long. I imagine that a company like Agilent, Racal, or some other VXIbus product manufacturer will want to purchase Fluke's newly acquired VXIbus products. I just can't see Fluke staying in the VXIbus business for longer that it has to. Fluke also gets into some markets for a second time. Fluke now owns function generators and arbitrary waveform generators—bench instruments. Several years ago, Fluke announced that it was going to focus on handheld instruments. The company still makes function generators but doesn't concentrate on them anymore. Yet here it is with an additional line of bench instruments. I'm sure that Fluke will continue to sell and service the acquired bench instruments, but not to promote them aggressively. WWG announced that it sold the product lines to Fluke so that it could focus on communications test products. Those former Wavetek communications test product lines remain with WWG. WWG will continue to develop and market a line of handheld LAN cable testers. Fluke's network division will continue to compete with WWG for that market.