Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: Pradeep Rath who wrote (4915)	12/7/1998 5:36:00 PM
From: Cogito	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10072

>>What I was wondering was whether there are theoretical limits like GMR or maybe this is a marketing limitation to not be a cannibal of the Zip. (I was hoping more like to see 500 meg or 1 gig in this form factor.) If the latter then "Be Bold" by golly. Innovate now, not latter. I want to see some giddyup here.<< Pradeep - First, I very much doubt that anything much above 60 to 80MB is possible using Clik! technology and media. Second, even if it were possible to make a 500MB or larger Clik! device it wouldn't necessarily be a good idea for Iomega to do so. It's not a matter of boldness or lack thereof. Kim Edwards, former CEO of Iomega, had one important thing right. He said the company should "Make what the customer wants and sell it at a price the customer is willing to pay." Zip is a perfect example of the success of that strategy. SyQuest tried to compete with Zip by improving "speeds and feeds". They're out of business. Avatar made a cunning little device called the Shark drive. Faster than Zip, with a higher capacity and a slightly higher price. Sure, it had a lower cost per megabyte. But it wasn't what the customer wanted. Avatar is out of business. There is undoubtedly a way to make a tiny, removable cartridge device that uses 500MB disks. But it would be so expensive that it would be unlikely to click with a wide audience. Iomega doesn't need to produce a 500MB Clik! drive, even if they could. I think most users will be very happy to be able to put 35 high-resolution images, or some equivalent amount of other data, on a tiny, ten dollar disk. I hope Iomega will be bold enough to sell those users a few hundred million of those disks. - Allen