Allen: Here's the meat of HeyKerry's Comdex report.
Comdex Report!
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For the inquiring Fool the 1997 Comdex Show was nothing less than
incredible.
My good bud Bruce (Blifil) and I spent the better part of a day cruising
the show, making stops to speak with execs at IOM, Hitachi, Sony,
Syquest, Imation and others.
There is much to report, but just so I won't be accused by certain
parties of viewing the show thru Rose-colored Foolish glasses, let me
start with the negative news first.
Well folks, we finally solved the mystery of the nationwide internal zip
shortage. And after hearing the explanation I'm SORRY I asked.
All I can say is ARRRRGHHH!
Here's the lowdown.....
According to Ed Downing, IOM National Channel manager, the culprit was
the defective internal drive faceplates--the rather low-tech plastic
casing that hides the drive, preferably in a color matching the CPU.
It seems that a huge order of faceplates were manufactured to the wrong
specs. "They simply didn't fit right in the CPU's" Downing explained
with a frown. The problem has been solved though, Downing added, with
over 10,000 internals having shipped in the last week. There is still a
300,000 unit back order, he said, with major corporate accts being taken
care of first before the retail channel is filled.
Now for the GOOD news....and there is so much I'm not sure where to
begin.
Let's start with the IOM show presence. Basically, Las Vegas looked like
it had been annexed by Roy.
IOM billboards lined the main boulevards. IOM signage covered pretty
much every Comdex shuttle bus. It seemed like every other taxi had
something IOM on it.
High above the Convention Center, meanwhile, floated a gigantic
Norton/Zip Rescue balloon, in the exact logo shape.
Once inside the Convention Center there were two main entrances to the
show. One door entered into Microsoft. The other into IOM. We're talking
prominence.
The IOM booth was a beehive of excitement and activity, with hundreds of
people crowded around demonstrations areas. But most of the excitement
was around the clik! area, just as KE promised.
One of the first folks we spoke to was Jim Spencer, who wasn't actually
with IOM, but is the owner of a Vegas trade show promotions company.that
was hired by IOM to help out.
"Never have I worked with a company that is as aggressive about
marketing as IOM" said Spencer. "I've got 24 people just handing out
buttons and stuff. That's unheard of. There are four tractor trailers
FULL of show stuff parked in back, and Iomega told me they want it EMPTY
by the end of the show."
Indeed, IOM 'stuff' was on the lapels and around the necks of a goodly
percentage of the tens of thousands of show attendees, as IOM was the
ONLY exhibitor with the marketing smarts to offer chances at expensive
prizes (a Micron CPU, for example) if the wandering IOM photographer
picked you out of the crowd wearing IOM stuff. Blifil got chosen for
some ungodly reason and maybe he'll find out by mail that he won the
Micron.
In honor of clik! IOM was also passing out jillions of these god-awful
annoying plastic 'clicking' devices that you press with your thumb. I
thought it was silly, but damned if you didn't hear them going off all
over the convention center like a swarm of locusts on steroids.
As an ad/PR guy I remain in awe of IOM's marketing savvy. These guys are
writing the book.
About the products....
In a nutshell, Comdex was all about clik!
In fact, the impression I got from the IOM folks is that clik! will
eventually dwarf Zip sales. That's because clik! can become a standard
in both computers AND consumer electronics.
The disk is almost exactly the same dimensions as a 35 mm slide, and
only slightly thicker. The drive sits in a table-top stand and at first
glance could pass for an electric shaver.
Finished retail drive packaging and clik! disk clamshell packaging
complete with j-hook hanging holes were also on display.
But most impressive of all was seeing the clik! in action. They had a
prototype Hitachi camera shooting 1 mb pix, which were being dumped off
to an amazing new printer that Polaroid was introducing at Comdex. The
printer was not much larger than a Jaz drive and spit out digital prints
that seemed to be continuous tone photographs....even under an 8x
magnification printer's lupe I couldn't find any dots. This boy has been
worked in advertising and graphics for nearly 20 years, and I've never
seen anything like it.
While wandering the IOM booth loading up my shopping bag with buttons, I
bumped into IOM General Sales Manager Tony Lagalante. I took the
opportunity to ask him about clik! oems, as well as those weak
endorsement letters last week from Kodak, HP, etc...
"Those companies didn't write those letters to waste their time,"
Lagalante smiled. "They're all currently designing products using clik!
It's just that these companies, as a rule, do not pre-announce
products."
I asked him about pricing.
"The plan is to have a mega-pixel image camera retailing for under
$500."
I asked about timeframes.
Lagalante replied, "We're presently looking at late '98 or early '99."
Another bit of news he divulged is that all Kinko's will be
clik!-ready.....
But it is clear that IOM is taking it's own sweet time to get it right
the first time. Indeed, the clik! world tour 'backstage pass' being
handed out includes all the upcoming major world computer trade shows
including Comdex '98.
clik! laptops!!!
A lady from CNF gave us what appeared to be a hastily produced black and
white flyer announcing a clik! laptop solution, using a PC-Card Type III
adapter. ;-D
CNF is calling it the "cardBAY" (TM) family of low-cost drives for
mobile products. The card will allow clik! to interface with all kinds
of PDA's, computers, cameras, etc....
clik! could indeed turn out to be Zip's only serious competition for
laptop! lol
One thing is certain, there will NEVER be a laptop that is too small for
a clik!
clik! drew such a crowd that it pretty much stole the thunder from all
other IOM products, including buz, Jaz2, ZipPlus, and even the amazing
Norton Rescue, which could turn out to be IOM's killer app of all time.
ÿ
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The Competition
Blifil and I stopped by all the major competitors. Here's a quick
rundown...
Syquest
Syquest actually spent a pretty penny on Comdex promotions. SYQT banners
lined the outside of the Convention Center. Inside the booth, working
versions of the Rocket and SparQ were on display. Impressive products, I
must say, but the SYQT booth was not a happy place. If First off, it was
practically empty. They had a big open-walled theatre showing a SparQ
promo video with hardly a seat taken.
A music engineer was doing a SYQT promo, mixing music recorded on the
Rocket, SparQ, and Syjet. He saw our IOM buttons and remarked that "you
can't do this kind of studio work on an Iomega drive." Blifil looked at
each other a little funny, then asked the guy to elaborate. He looked
across the booth, "Uh, you should ask the guys over there."
So we went over 'there' and the tech guy answered our question as best
he could, explaining in his best techie jargon....."Iomega drives are a
joke."
Oh, okay.
And talking about jokes, only ONE other company than IOM had numerous
kinds of buttons printed up. Guess who? Yup, only their gems included
such catchy phrases as "SparQ your creativity" and "Light My Fire."
Huh?
ÿ
Sony
Sony wasn't exactly pushing the HIFD drive too heavy. In fact, we had to
search all over the Sony booth just to find it. What we found was one
working drive on a small table with minimal promotional signage and only
a one-sheet color flyer singing its praises.
Nevertheless, the HiFD is very impressive.
They were running video straight off the floppy and it looked great. I
tried asking questions but the guys working the booth were right off the
747 from Narita, and knew maybe 10 words of English.
I asked about pricing.
"No price yet. This very nice drive, yes?!" the guy exclaimed with a
toothy smile and a big two thumbs up.
"What about the Sony VAIO," I asked, "which is selling well with
built-in Zips?"
"We try Sony to take out Zip, and put this."
I guess a question about transfer rates was out of the question. :-D
So we meandered over to the Mavica area.....Mavica we were told is the
#1 selling digital camera, thanks to Mr. Floppy. I asked if Sony was
working on any IOM clik! products...
"Click? What's that?"
The Sony person gave me a blank stare, then pointed me in the direction
of Sony's head of product engineering, a tall bearded guy whose name I
didn't get.
I asked him about clik!
"Huh?"
The guy had never heard of clik!. I showed him the polaroid clik! print
and told him this was from a Hitachi using IOM's new mini-disk.
"Wow," he said as checked out the print. "Guess I'll go over there and
check it out."
Amazing that we Fools can know far more about a market than a
multi-national exec who does it for a living..... :-D
ÿ
Imation
No sooner had I walked into the Imation exhibit than I overheard a chat
between an IMN exec and a retailer.
The IMN fellow was explaining how to install an LS-120 drive.
After a couple of minutes of bios this, and motherboard that, and
controller-card whatever, the retailer interrupted.
"This sounds a bit too complicated for the average computer user."
Replied Mr. IMN, "It's really not that diffult. I walked my
brother-in-law thru it on the phone and it only took about 25-minutes."
LOL
ÿ
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Anyway folks, that's about all I can think of for now.....hope you
enjoyed the show...
;-D
--K |
