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Non-Tech : Any info about Iomega (IOM)? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rocky Reid who wrote (48647)	2/23/1998 4:33:00 PM
From: Bill Lin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 58324

Sony HiFD intro commercial show Zips in Click of Death mode: tag - "Stuff as important as yours should be kept in a more reliable place." Rocky, this is a fake commercial, but one you will agree that could cause IOM great concern. The essence of this idea is the need for reliability by the public and the power of "word of mouth". WOM created Star Wars, ET, Titanic, AND Iomega. I think you and Kim Edwards have missed this main point. IOM sales have done well because people recommend the purchase to other people. We are well beyond the stage where authoritive figures like J. Dvorak can recommend the product and get zip drives to increase. We are at the stage where fellow users (consumers/retail) have a zip drive and they need to "sneaker net" files between each other's systems. This is where the ideas of "standard" come into play. Where corporations use zips as storage media has other problems that the current commercials of zip do not address. (issues such as centralized storage/network vs personal data archiving) With 12 million zip sales announced, and 12-18 million more to sell in calendar 1998, a potential 24 to 30 million units will be in users hands by new years 1999. This will be very difficult for Sony to compete against. They must resort to direct product comparisons if they want to dominate this market. The easiest way is to scare people to NOT buy the zip. This by questioning its reliability. Of course there are legal issues, but in Commando Marketing, you take no prisoners. Syquest will die because it says its products are better than IOM. That will not sell units, even if true. Its products are better than the 1.44mb floppy, but units sales are much lower. You will reply it is apples and oranges. That is my point too. The Zip/Jaz is not an apples comparison with the Syjet/Quest. The WOM issue is too great. IMO, for Syquest or Sony to break the IOM hold on consumers/retail, they have to attack its reputation for reliability. The COD issue, unless properly addressed by TECHNICAL answers, will prove to be a marketing nightmare for Kim Edwards. All readers remember the Pentium Bug episode. The manner that Intel handled the problem caused great investor concern. The manner IOM handles this Click of Death issue is also of great concern. BL