Jaz Drives in Upstate New York
To all:
I thought you'd all like to know that Jaz drives have
now started showing up in the stores here in the Greater
Albany area of upstate New York. Egghead had two internals
available about a week ago for roughly $550. That was
before the drop in price announced by Iomega. Last Friday
afternoon, following that announcement, COMP-USA had two
externals on the shelves, and had four sections of their
shelves dedicated to Jaz externals but without stock
sitting on them, at roughly $500. I went back to the
same store the next day; all the drives were gone, and
the shelf space was filled up with something else. They
also had about a dozen Jaz cartridges available behind
the counter for about $130. These were the first Jaz
drives or cartridges I've ever spotted in the stores
here in the Capital District of New York State.
My reading of this is that Iomega is now shipping the
Jaz in quantity, enough even to make it to somewhat
secondary markets like Albany, N.Y., and that they're
selling as fast as they come in, which is the only
explanation I can come up with for why COMP-USA first
had a whole section for the Jaz and then had no sign
of the Jaz whatsoever twenty-four hours later.
On another matter, just in case you missed it, the
Sunday _New York Times_ yesterday had a piece in their
business section on investors using the Web. SI got
a mention, and of course IOMG figured prominently.
For the most part, it was favorable to Iomega, though
it perpetuates one inaccuracy in the following sentence:
"One day in June, for instance, shares of Iomega tumbled
27 percent when Mitsubishi Electric said it would build
a computer disk drive that would be faster than Iomega's."
(David J. Morrow, "From Kitchen Table to Keyboard:
Investment Clubs Flock to Internet," _New York Times_,
07 July 1996, section 3, pp. 1, 4-5, quotation on p. 5.)
As we know, Mitsubishi announced that it was going to
go with the LS-120, which is slower than the Zip,
not faster. Also, if I remember correctly, the selloff
that day was because of something else (Cabot?) as
well, not just because of the Mitsubishi announcement.
Just thought you'd like just a bit more evidence to
fuel your interpretations of things.
Cheers, Tom (long IOMG) |
