Welcome aboard Dale, and any other skeptic.
This is Jeremy's Dad, and though most of you probably have already viewed a lot of this, I'm going to synthesize as succinctly as possible some of the info from the IOMEGA press conference: I think this relates, as the question is: share price too high?
Why is LS-120 so great? Being manufactured to sell at $190, $210 as an option, and it's 40% slower than the ZIP? Ken Edwards articulated consumer buying ratio to be 1/4 - 1/10 of ZIP drive and actually calls "the LS-120 inferior as a competitor." It's "mindboggling" (my word, he used anathema) as to why other PC manufacter, IBM, PB, ENC, ACER, HP, UNISYS went with ZIP, and some others chose not to. Consider, EZ Flyer. It's 4x's faster as the LS-120's external and priced at a comparable cost. KE compares this to purchasing a 486, 50mhz, 8mb DRAM in lieu of a Pentium Pro 166mhz with 16mb DRAM. Stupid (my editorial).
Latest IDC (leading PC industry research firm report) before ZIP had all its deals compared the chances of ZIP with LS-120, it (IDC) concluded the first to get 3 out of the top 10 PC manufacturers will win because of "path dependence." Iomegans (my comment) "look at the scorecard, looks like 6-4, bottom of the ninth two outs and no one's on base. Or two moves to checkmate. Better game for us."
MacWeek's published monthly dollar-volume lender products for Apple products, for April gave ZIP (SCSI) external the second spot. Same as it has been for a while. Yet debuting at number 3 was JAZ drive. Strong anticpation that JAZ drive will contribute greatly to 2nd quarter earnings since it took ZIP some time to ascend to the #2 spot. Conservative growth over the quarter listed at 50% or $333 million according to comments from. (Compiled from comments from MF Chiros)
David Durn, Chariman of the Board of IOMEGA siad at IOMEGA's shareholder's meeting "given the quality of management, and productivity down the line, the BEST is yet to come!
Listen, Fellow Iomegans, pay attention to KE's comments on migration path over the next two years..."the zip drive prices will drop as IOMEGA introduces 200m $199 and the 100m will price out at $99. Later when the 400m is introduced expect the price of the 200m to also be reduced." My comment (standard procedures for all companies. Look at the Contura--an albatross now but an okay tool for an old man like me.)
KE said "This is why LS-120 is a dud." And why IOMEGA virtually gave up the technology to 3M.
UNISYS's endorsement to offer ZIP as an option is all it's machine helps on the corporate side. Bandai's Pippin said "Zip is the future of personal storage solution."..."When a nobody's product get endorsed by IBM/NEC/PB/HP/Acer/UNISYN/ Bandai, you know you have a compelling winner. Three months from now, we'll marvel at the madness of the market."
Comments form Mr. Grolnick, ZIP product manager, (Press Conference)
"We're creating the future...ZIP will be in the movie 'ERASER.' 2 million drives sold in 14 months. Next few weeks, several announcementsthat will totally eliminate any issues."
Tim Hill: World Wide Marketing, IOMEGA:
"HP, Micron, Power Computing, Packard Bell were the first OEM to work with ZIP for one reason only, because of consumer acceptance. Ban Dai is going to offer their opinion of World Gamin system platform with the ZIP drive by the end of 1996. Fuji, Maxell, Sony, Seiko-Epson, Mega Media, TDK, Memorex and Sentinel all are supporitng the ZIP technology. Iomega has the support of every major floppy disk and drive manufacturer in the world, as well as virtually every major retailer, cataloguer and distributor worldwide."
I'm not going to say that I didn't reel a little, but facts are facts, and I suggest any of you who have access, get a copy of the entire press conference. Let it be your teddy bear for awhile, or tattered little stuffed dog. Somebody tell me why is it WSJ, and all the others cannot see the votes are in, and IOMEGA is a real success?
Good luck, Live Long and Prosper.
Regards,
Jeremy's Dad |
