Here's an article from earlier this year that you might find interesting . . .
Iomega Corp. zips toward 10 million
Company wants to make the Zip drive the industry standard
January 29, 1997
By MIKE MARINO
Standard-Examiner staff
Ten million Zip drives.
While not as memorably Hooveresque as a chicken in every pot and two cars in every garage, it's what Iomega Corp. president and CEO Kim Edwards feels would
make his company's Zip drive the industry standard, if not a household word.
"We've talked about it internally, and from an expert perspective I really don't know what the answer is, where the volume is enough to say that it's the industry
standard," Edwards said Tuesday night, after the company's conference call to announce its 1996 earnings.
"But I have a feeling in my gut . . . and my gut tells me it's 10 million. Once you're at 10 million plus of these things out there . . . if we could get to 10 million, then I
think we're close."
During its conference call with analysts Tuesday, Iomega announced that as of December it had sold more than 4 million of the flagship 100-megabyte storage
devices, which were introduced in early 1995 and are the product primarily responsible for giving Roy a billion-dollar company on 1900 West.
That 4 million didn't come steadily, either. While it took 10 months to sell the first million, it took only 11 more months to sell 3 million more. And Iomega's
production facilities are now capable of producing 8 million of the drives each year.
Exponentially, that would mean the 10 millionth Zip might fly off a shelf sometime this summer. In reality, though, the battle is still being waged to replace the 3
1/2-inch floppy disk as the industry's preferred method of storing and transferring information.
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Note that KE's goal was 10 MM. Guess he got what he wished for AND MORE!!! |
