Iomega ran into trouble when it lost the leading edge, with a lack of innovation keeping Zip disks at 250MB for years as other storage media increased in capacity. Zip sales, which count for more than 80 percent of Iomega's revenue base, are continuing to fall, despite recent innovations leading to the 750 MB disk. Iomega is trying to become less reliant on Zip by expanding its offerings to companies.
"You don't have to go away from Iomega now to get a real storage solution," Peter Atton, marketing manager for Iomega Asia Pacific told ZDNet Australia . Iomega has increased its NAS range to 720 GB, and has introduced its own range of USB mini-drives.
Mini-drives are devices small enough to be used as a keyring that plug into the USB port on computers, and use Flash memory. Iomega has released a 64MB and 128MB, and plans to release a 256MB before Xmas.
Atton said he expects the drive to be big in the market for interchangeable storage medium, but doesn't expect it to be a big piece of Iomega's business. "The price of the drive in regards to memory is very expensive," he said. "Its benefits are its ease of transportation, it's lighter and easier to use. The convenience factor is way, way up."
Iomega expects consumers will pay a premium for the convenience offered by the mini-drive, but view the product as an extension to the Iomega range rather than a saviour product.
Atton explained Iomega's current strategy is to offer a complete storage solution, in order to reduce the companies reliance on Zip drives and make the most of an expanding storage market.
"Because of our product type we're not a 'necessary to have', we're a 'very nice to have'," he said. "When the industry goes down, we find we follow. When the industry goes up again, we lag a bit behind it, so we're just starting to go up now."
