Iomega Corporation has introduced the clik! family of low-cost, high-capacity
removable storage products built with Iomega's highly mobile n-hand
technology platform. The clik! product family is designed to enable entirely
new generations of products and applications, bringing unprecedented
removable storage to existing and future portable digital products, including
digital cameras, hand-held computers, personal digital assistants and smart
cellular phones.
The clik! product family was unveiled at a press conference in New York.
The announcement was accompanied by endorsements from industry leaders,
including Kodak, HP, Hitachi, Microsoft, Polaroid, Motorola, Matsushita,
Citizen and Texas Instruments.
The clik! product suite includes:
Clik! drives - Portable, low-cost external drives that can be used with
virtually any digital portable or desktop product. Small enough to fit in
a shirt pocket, the mobile clik! drive is a perfect storage companion for
today's hand-held devices.
Clik! drives for OEMs - A miniaturized, low-cost, low-power version of
the drive will be available for manufacturers to build into portable
digital products, ranging from digital cameras to hand-held computers
and printers.
Clik! disks -40 megabyte removable and reusable disks that are about
half the size of a credit card. The clik! disks will sell for a suggested
retail price of $9.95 (U.S.) each and at just 25 cents a megabyte, provide
the most affordable, high-capacity storage solutions for portable digital
products. A single clik! disk can store approximately 40 high quality
(megapixel) digital photographs, 400 10-page Microsoft Word
documents, or 25 10-page Microsoft PowerPoint presentations with
graphics.
Clik! accessories - Ultra-lightweight accessories to allow customers to
use the clik! drive anywhere. The accessories include a rechargeable
battery pack, additional docking stations to enable high speed
connectivity back to a desktop computer, a method to transfer data
from current flash memory cards, such as those used in Kodak digital
cameras, and other adapters designed to ensure that clik! drives can be
connected to any portable digital product.
"The potential market impact of clik! drives is significant," said Crawford
Del Prete, vice president, DC Storage Research. "The absence of affordable
storage for ultra-portable and consumer products has been a gating factor in
market acceptance. Clik! drives provide a missing piece of the puzzle, opening
a whole new array of applications for these products."
The clik! product family will impact multiple markets, including:
Digital Cameras - Clik! drives and disks are designed to bring the
traditional film model to digital photography. For the first time, users of
digital cameras will be able to take unlimited near-35mm quality
(megapixel) pictures using reusable clik! disks. Today, customers can
only take a small number of high quality photographs with a digital
camera before they must download the images to a computer. In
addition to removing the tie to the computer, clik! disks will deliver a
"roll of digital film" for a suggested retail price of $9.95, making digital
pictures potentially less expensive than the cost of traditional film plus
processing.
Hand-held Personal Computers (HPCs) and Personal Digital Assistants
(PDAs)-Clik! disks are designed to bring desktop capabilities to HPCs
and PDAs, providing the storage needed to run Microsoft PowerPoint,
receive email attachments and cache web pages. Additionally, the clik!
drive is expected to connect to virtually any HPC, desktop or notebook
computer to enable customers to easily synchronize information
between portable products and back to the computer.
Printers and Presentation Projectors - The clik! drive is designed so
that customers will be able to connect the clik! drive directly to the next
generation of printers and projectors to print or display information
stored on clik! disks. This process will be further streamlined when
printer and projector manufacturers adopt internal clik! drives.
Other products that could benefit from Iomega's new clik! product family
include smart cellular phones, global positioning systems (GPS), electronic
tracking systems and hand-held games.
"This product family offers a significant breakthrough in the ongoing
evolution of handheld computing, bringing broad new application possibilities
to portable products," said Dennis Hamann, worldwide marketing manager of
HP's Asia Pacific PC Division. "By removing the limitations of portable digital
products with a storage solution that can work across all products, clik! drives
will expand the usability and ultimate appeal of these products."
In a separate announcement, CNF Incorporated stated that it plans to build
a version of the clik! drive next year. Additionally, Microsoft Corporation,
Digital Equipment Corporation, InFocus Systems, Inc., LSI Logic, Sierra
imaging and many other leading corporations issued endorsements and
supporting statements for the clik! drives and disks.
"Iomega's clik! product family will extend the functionality of today's HPCs,
and future Windows CE devices, by offering affordable, removable storage,"
said Harel Kodesh, general manager of Microsoft's Consumer Appliances
Group. "We are excited about working closely with Iomega to integrate the
power of the clik! drive with Windows CE to deliver new capabilities."
"We want the digital photography experience as accessible to consumers as
traditional photography," said Jeff Peters, general manager, Digital Imaging in
Kodak's Digital Applied Imaging business. "Iomega's introduction of the clik!
drives with access for our compact flash media is a major advance in this
direction. These products will enable more customers to take, use and store
high quality digital pictures more easily."
Iomega also announced today the formation of the Mobile Storage Division
to meet the needs of the digital imaging and portable products markets. The
Mobile Storage Division will develop and market the clik! drives, disks and
accessories.
the evolution of the
n-hand technology introduced last year to the higher capacity, full product
family announced today came about from ongoing discussions with
manufacturers across all portable digital product markets.
"Last year, we introduced our n-hand technology platform with the idea that
we would work with manufacturers to further define and bring products to
market based on this platform," said Kim Edwards. "Through those efforts, we
have been able to develop a product that offers twice the capacity of our
original plan at the announced price, giving consumers and manufacturers
highly adaptable, portable storage for 25 cents per megabyte. This enables
high-quality digital photography for the mass market and provides PDAs and
other mobile information appliances with virtually unlimited storage."
The company plans to begin U.S. shipments of clik! drives and clik! disks to
manufacturers and channel partners in the second half of 1998 with shipments
in Europe and Asia beginning soon thereafter. Matsushita Communications
Industrial Co., LTD and Citizen Watch Co., Ltd. today announced that they
have signed of letters of intent to license, manufacture and sell clik! drives.
Iomega's clik! drives are designed to bring unlimited storage to portable
digital products through 40 megabyte clik! disks. The lightweight clik! drive is
designed to be an ideal storage companion for today's portable products, from
digital cameras and HPCs to PDAs and smart cellular phones. And, with the
potential to connect to virtually any portable digital or desktop product,
customers will be able to easily share information between products and
synchronize it back to a desktop computer. The clik! product family will give
customers the Capacity to Do More, such as storing unlimited near-35mm
(megapixel) quality pictures on digital cameras and facilitating the use of
desktop applications like Microsoft PowerPoint and Microsoft Excel on
hand-held computers. The clik! drives will be available at retail for a suggested
price under $200 U.S.) and the clik! disks will be available for suggested retail
price of $9.95 (U.S.).
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