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

To: Gregg Powers who wrote (57092)	7/10/1998 11:40:00 AM
From: Trakker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 58324

Gregg, Thanks for your comments. We can debate all day what is considered a launch, but the fact remains that the LS-120 has been in the marketplace for a few years, and its predecessor floptical drive was in development back to the late 80's and early 90's. The fact remains that backwards compatibility is not enough of a differentiator to sink zip - regardless if it's marketed by Imation, the consortium, or Sony. Granted. I'll give you the numbers on OEMs and expected installed base, but what is and what might be are two extremely different issues. Clik - might be. Zip is. LS-120 installed base - might be. I don't think it is premature to assume that backwards compatibility is a dead issue. The first wave of buyers - the early majority that determines the adoption of a product (according to a variety of high-tech marketers) have adopted zip. So the LS-120 battle is more than just hollow numbers in a press release. Granted you can make installed base comparisons, but I think that is highly premature considering Q3/Q4 is the retail buying season - so we can't compare Iomega's first half to Imation's back half, apples to oranges. I agree with you on the "enthusiastic" responses to short viewpoints. But, packaging is everything. Personally I have had some great discussions with bears on this thread, as long as things are kept from becoming a sandbox fight we can have some meaningful dialogue. I'll give you some of your numbers - basically because its speculative, I would throw out that your retail disk price is off as well as the margins, and I believe your tie rates are about 40% off(low) today. But considering the shift to an OEM model, your number is a good forecast. You can bet the SG&A number will change dramatically with new management and a new focus. IMO Iomega will not come close to spending $100mm in advertising this year, it will most likely come in around $50-60mm - and consider that most of that has already been spent. Plus the layoffs across the board will take care of another big chunk. IMO Iomega will return to profitability by mid Q3. Good luck with your investment, and thanks again for your comments - I'll tuck it away in my reference box. take care

To: Gregg Powers who wrote (57092)	7/10/1998 1:59:00 PM
From: Carlpp	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 58324

First of all I don't think the tie ratio is 5 disks per year, I believe it is more like 5 disks per drive. I know when I bought mine I purchased a six pak of disks and have no need for anymore. I don't plan another purchase of disks until the price is approximately half of the current price. For long term storage I use CD-R. Therefore I believe your disk numbers for the future are a bit skewed on the high side. I also believe Iomega handling of the Jaz 2 drive is almost criminal. It cost only a few dollars more to build that drive than the Jaz drive costs, yet they are tring to get a $200+ premium for it. No one I know will pay $500 for a 2 gig drive and then have to buy a SCSI card on top of that. The price should immediately drop to the Jaz levels and the jaz drives be discontinued. (keep on building the jaz cartridges, they are worth the price differential). With pricing the way it now is jaz 2 will never take off. Just my two cents worth. Carl Price

To: Gregg Powers who wrote (57092)	7/10/1998 2:10:00 PM
From: Trakker	Respond to of 58324

Gregg, Thanks for the e-mail. Good points worth the discussion <end>

To: Gregg Powers who wrote (57092)	7/10/1998 5:59:00 PM
From: Kevin Linder	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 58324

Gregg; This was a well reasoned and thought out piece on the potential future of IOM. I think you made a good point in that a lot of people don't want to hear negative things about this stock (understandable, I don't want to hear bad things about something I buy). However, if management is listening then they will get more proactive in building shareholder value. I am not sure Clik! will be the knock out/blockbuster product needed. I feel that there is a lot of potential consolidation in the Disk Drive/Removable Storage market. The component supplies RDRT, APM, KMAG are really hurting right now. SEG and IBM who make a lot of their own parts may be in a position to have superior market position based upon their own internal productions. QNTM, WDC, Maxtor, Fujitsu will put further pressure on the component suppliers margins, inventories, etc. I could see lots of potential synergies, cost reduction possibilities, cross marketing opportunities with a potential merger/buyout of IOM. I am not sure that Dunn would view or encourage such a change in policy though. Kim Edwards would certainly not have. Philips Electronics, Allied Signal could also find IOm interesting. Of course, this has also been a long week and my eyes are blurring as I type this. It may be possible I am not really typing this just dreaming. Kevin Linder

To: Gregg Powers who wrote (57092)	7/10/1998 7:04:00 PM
From: FruJu	Respond to of 58324

>By the way, one obvious problem with the Zip 250 is that doubling the >storage roughly halves the number of disks that a consumer will >likely require. It's not a great evolution for the business model to >increase the volume of unprofitable equipment sales at the expense of >the cash cow.. Actually, with the rate that file sizes increase these days, I don't think an expansion like that would make too much difference to the tie ratio by the time it's released. For example, the other day, I wanted to backup a piece of software to my ZIP. Even after I had compressed the entire folder, it came to 105MB, and I had to split it into separate sections and save it to two ZIP disks, which was a pain. Things are just getting bigger and bigger, and with fast network connections, people are downloading more videos and sound files off the web which will only add to the amount of data storage required. E>