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Non-Tech : Iomega Thread without Iomega -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Huibs who wrote (1073)	8/16/1998 1:55:00 PM
From: FuzzFace	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10072

The amazing thing about floppies is that anyone still makes them. From the article you linked to: A staggering 2.3 billion diskettes were sold worldwide last year, according to Magnetic Media Information Services, a Tokyo-based research firm. While that number has been steadily dropping to well under 2 billion this year partly due to the growing use of CD-ROMs to distribute software, experts say it's a slow fade. I don't think 2.3B floppies is a staggering number, given their tiny capacity of 1.44MB. But the worst part is, with the ubiqitous rebates, they are free. How can anyone profit from giving product away? Even if one foolishly pays full retail, they probably generate no more than 50 cents apiece in revenue for the manufacturer. So even if one company were the sole floppy manufacturer, and there were no rebates, total annual revenue is about $1 billion and dropping. The almost-free floppy will be slowly marginalized, but go away completely only when people are given a new almost-free rewritable medium of much greater capacity. At $1-$2 apiece, Zip would be that medium.