Sorry I might be late with my comments but I'll post hem anyway :
So here are a few exerpts from the 2 IOMs releases :
First I want to tell you all how relieved I am, I'm not scared of IOM anymore. Yes this is smoke.
Here's why:
"Iomega's clik! product family will be the first high-capacity,
affordable storage solution for portable digital products and is
expected to be available by the second half of 1998."
This products was announced one year ago and would not ship before second half of 1998! Let me laugh! IMO, this is not professionnal. This is still vaporware. This also means that SanDisk can continue to take more market share and entice more OEMs while dramatically reducing prices for its products and shipping more high capacity cards. This is made possible thanks to SNDK's 2-bit per cell technology. 8 to 10 months is a very long period in this industry. Look back 10 months: SNDK was already getting the Lion's share but there was no products. Now : 90% of digicams sold at Christmas will use SNDK's CompactFlash cards.
"The clik! product family includes a small, low-cost portable drive designed for customers to take and use anywhere with their hand-held products. "
So we get the confirmation there's indeed a drive. It wouldn't have been possible otherwise. But why don't they mention the price, oh sorry! they say it's "low cost". Thanks for the accurate information. That makes sense. Low cost. Low cost... Yeah, I mean it's not expensive. It's cheap. At least it cost less than the camera.
So let me elaborate on the portability of the drive. While on the beach with my children (don't have any yet but who knows?) I get closer to the water almost naked (no pockets) with a camera and a drive and I take pictures of them. Of course. Easy!!! No mentionning the sand going into the drive.
This reminds me of Camcorders 15 years ago!
''The clik! drive will be the first true 'digital film' that is able to compete on both price and image quality with regular film. A variety of Atmel's future digital camera products will have the interface standard integrated into its devices to form a complete and cost-effective solution,'' stated James Raby, Atmel's Business Development Manager for Imaging Products.
Sorry James Raby but isn't it already the case with flash memory cards like SNDK's?
''Zoran's field-proven compression technology is already in use in many of today's market-leading digital cameras and video editing products. The alliance and high level of cooperation between the companies will enable us to powerfully leverage our new clik! product,'' added Lundgren.
So some Digicams using CF already use this technology. What's the deal here?
''Working together with Zoran's advanced JPEG compression technology,
Iomega's 40 Megabyte capacity clik! disk will store unlimited very
high-quality, high-resolution digital photographs on $9.95 disks,'' said Dr. Shmuel Farkash, Marketing Director, Zoran Corporation.
"The clik! product family gives customers the capacity to do more, such as storing unlimited near-35mm quality pictures on digital cameras and using desktop applications like Microsoft PowerPoint and Microsoft Excel on a hand-held computer. "
Now we know the price of a 40MB Click card= $10 or 4MB for $1 or 1MB for $.50. That's damn cheap! If you take a 20MB CompactFlash, it cost you $300 back in April or $15 per 1MB. That's 30 times the price of Click.
SanDisk is not competitive pricewise. This is THE SOLE issue for the consumers when comparing products with identical qualities. Hopefully this is not entirely the case.
See how they are good at marketing : they say "unlimited near-35mm quality pictures" This would mean unlimited number of pictures on one 40MB click. Quality is good but never as good as with traditional pictures. In addition, they mean we'll be able to use full-scale versions of MS Excel on our HPC. Sorry only scaled down versions
as it's already the case now with CF cards.
Eventually, I would point out that CF has always been and continues to be an open market. Many many firms are producing it and making dollars thanks to it : Samsung, NEC, Matsushita, Simple Technology, Smart Modular, Lexar, M-Systems,...the list is so long.
Here only IOM would make the digital film. This could be an issue that would be taken into consideration by portable products manufacturers. |
