RE: Is Orb a threat?
Sheila,
You asked Jack K., not me, but here's my two cents on
the question anyway. I have a bachelors degree from
Caltech. I've been programming computers since 1966.
I've been in Iomega since the beginning of 1995 and
have made quite a bit from it. And I've read most
of the thirty-six thousand posts to this thread,
heaven help me. You can take or leave my opinions,
but at least this gives you some basis for choosing
between those two options intelligently.
Will there someday be a replacement for the Jaz that
people will bolt to? Yes. Could it be the Orb?
Yes, at least it's remotely possible. At the moment,
all we have are claims in the form of text, so it's
very hard to tell for sure. Do I think it WILL be
the Orb? No. It's a startup company with no track
record as an institution for manufacturing large
numbers of a technologically sophisticated product
with good quality control. (In contrast, Iomega had
been producing the Bernoullis for years.) They don't
have a huge pile of cash to spend, and we don't know
yet about how big a line of credit the venture
capitalists have given them. And so on. So, if
in fact the Jaz is going to get displaced, I'd be
surprised if a startup is going to do it. Rather,
somebody with a lot of the pieces already in place
to make a big move in the removable mass storage
arena will probably do it. Maybe IBM if they come
up with something spiffy, which they are capable of
doing, and by some miracle they don't bungle the
marketing of it. Who knows? But it's not very
likely that Orb will do it. And you can be CERTAIN
that NOBODY will be able to do it without a good
year or more of lead time, during which you'll be
able to watch the negative effects creep up on
Iomega in plenty of time to bail if you think it
prudent to do so. Since the Jaz isn't all that
much of their big bucks, though, I wouldn't think
it'd hurt them long-term all that terribly even if
Jaz only got a modest market share. I'm certain
that it'll be more than a year before any product
will be able to drive Jaz completely out of the
market, if one can do that at all.
Just keep reading here. You'll know for sure
months and months before most of the Street knows
if anything bad is going to happen.
Cheers, Tom (long IOM) |
