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Technology Stocks : SYQUEST -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John T. Hardee who wrote (7059)	8/22/1998 2:52:00 AM
From: Dale Stempson	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 7685

RE: Nomai (Annual Report snips) ________________________________________ A few references to SyQuest: >>> The growth was very fast until 1997, then slowed rapidly following market upheavals : very strong deceleration of the peripherals for Apple Macintosh , almost halt of consumables for SyQuest drives, domination of Iomega with Zip on the bottom-of-the-range market, unavailability of components for CD-RW drives. At the end of the first quarter of 1997, NOMAI saw the collapse of the hard disk cartridge market which represented more than 50 % of the activity in 1996. This collapse was explained by the losses of significant market shares of Apple and SyQuest which caused an important reduction in the end-users consumption. Very strong tensions on the prices started at the end of the summer. These tensions were created by one of the principal American competitors (SyQuest) which operated with strongly negative gross margins between August and the end of the year. <<< New product references: >>> NOMAI envisages to market a new drive with its associated cartridge using the hard disk technology, the Infinity 2000. These drive will offer a capacity of 2 Giga-Bytes. It is currently in qualification by OEM manufacturers and will be marketed to the general public at the end of 1998. It's price should be very attractive. NOMAI achieved the development of a 2 GB drive which has a very attractive design (low cost, very high performance). NOMAI envisaged to industrialize the drive in Asia to profit from cost prices similar to its competitors. OEM agreements for the industrialization of this platform are being negotiated following the presentation of the product in March 1998 at CeBIT, in Hannover, in Germany. No agreement had been signed at the date of publication of this document. <<< Their take on tie ratios: >>> Disk Trend does not analyze the consumable market (cartridges) but only the drive market. But NOMAI's experience on this market allows the company to consider that the use of the cartridges per drive depends on the media price. The current use of cartridges per drive, per year is the following : - 50 cartridges when its price is < $2.5 - 10 cartridges when its price is < $12.5 - 6.2 cartridges when its price is < $24 - 4.5 cartridges when its price is between $24 and $49 - 3.2 cartridges when its price is higher than $50/ <<< ________________________________________ I wonder if Iomega will take the ball and run with that 2GB drive... or will they stick with the Jaz... ? Here's another thought: Assuming the Nomai technology is similar to Castlewood's Orb (MR, etc), and also assuming Castlewood's claim of being able to increase the capacity to 10GB by 2000, perhaps Iomega is considering producing a very high capacity MR removable similar to the Quest. BTW, One last tidbit from Nomai - they some interesting members on their Supervisory board: - Jean-Louis Gassee, president of Be Inc. and former vice-president of Apple - Leon Malmed, vice-president of sales and marketing at SanDisk (a subsidiary of Seagate, the leading hard drive manufacturer) - Bernard Giroud, ex vice-president of Intel Europe and vice-president of Intel Corporation, currently responsible for the funds Schoeder Venture in Paris Regards - Dale