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Monday, March 9, 1998 Friday, Iomega closed at $8 13/16, up $3/16 (+2.17%). TODAY'S RECAP: This weekend, folks in the Iomega folder discussed clik!, flash memory, IOM pricing, and more. Enjoy! INDEX: Use the Search or Find feature of your word processor to locate the article number (Find: 1++, 3++, etc.)
1++ ~Huibs pht~ on clik!
Recap written and posts compiled by TMF Weekly. _______________________________ And now, the Best of the Board...Started 9:00pm ET 3/5/98. 1+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Subject: Re: Clik-ing dead (on arrival)?
To the user, it's as much a cartridge as a flash card or a clik disk. ..horse manure mark.. ..if you think an end user is likely to plop down 200 bucks at a time for a 'disc/drive' you're WRONG.. (MFO).. ..folks will flock to the $9.99 price in droves EVEN IF IT'S AT A HIGHER COST PER MB..(MFO).. ..if what you're saying is correct, then WHY ON EARTH DON'T FOLKS BUY CAMERAS THAT ACCEPT 250 FOOT ROLLS OF FILM??..(those are available, btw).. ..the consumer WILL go to the local drugstore and plop down $10 for a clik! disc.. ..THEY WILL NOT PLOP DOWN $200 FOR FLASH/TINY DRIVES.. ..all of this is MFO, of course.. 2+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Subject: Re: Cheap media, expensive drives... It seems to me if the clik! comes in and creates a whole new category that has not existed before....then how does one know if the cost of the device is too high or not? I think Iomega will probably have a feel as to what quantities they need to sell at $200 and if they a revolutionary product or not. The Zip was the revolutionary product that everything before and everything after has been compared to. Before that everything was kind of just floating around in space. On paper you can compare the tiny hard drive to the clik! and scare yourself to death. But there are certain things you will never see on paper until the production product is in your hands. It seems like Iomega is going to make the clik! a swiss army knife that way at the very least they have all the bases covered. I have my fingers crossed. Dave 3+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Subject: Re: Cheap media, expensive drives...
Now you folks are telling me clik will unseat flash with expensive drives and cheap media. A couple points- again in my amateur opinion. These points are all for built in clik!. First, IMHO, flash memory is a JOKE. It is a TEMPORARY solution for digital cameras. I've seen and used digital cameras, and I really don't like flash. Maybe it's just me. I really don't know. But compared to either clik! or a clik!-like device, I am really LAUGHING at flash. If I personally were to go shopping for a digital camera, and I had the option of getting flash or clik!, I would consider flash for a total of about 5 seconds. Whether I own IOM or not. It's just SO DARN EASIER. Okay, I pay a little extra. Digital cameras are expensive anyway. If the salesman told me that in addition to clik!, there were enhancements to the camera itself, I'd probably not know the difference. I'm a camera amateur, I know, but that's how I'm thinking right now. If I buy clik!, I can take a "roll" of film, pop it out, put another in, etc. I can stack up the "rolls" until I get off my butt to either take them to a developer or download them all at once to my computer. I'm LAZY. I don't want to take care of it the second after I've filled a roll. And I think I'm like most people. If I buy flash, I fill up my flash card and then IMMEDIATELY empty it to my laptop/desktop/ other device, or I insert another "roll", which in this case costs $20-$200. I don't want to carry around several hundred dollars of "film" if I go on vacation. I want to carry my camera, and 5 or 6 "rolls", at hopefully no more than $40 or $50. This doesn't even mention capacity differences. Yes, clik! is vaporware right now and by the time it's widely available, flash will be down in price by maybe even 50%. That's still a lot more expensive than clik!. Here's a 4Meg card for $49. Olympus Flash To make that equivalent to 5 "rolls" of 25 pix each, we're talking 32KB pictures. If capacity doubles at that price, we're talking 64MB pictures. Pretty crappy. clik! vs flash is not like Zip vs SparQ or MO. Flash is so expensive that it is cost prohibitive. I will not buy any more than one or two flash cards because they cost so much. I will not store my old flash cards and keep buying more. With clik!, I can do this. It is cheaper in both $/MB, and unit cost per "roll". Flash does not offer sufficient capacity to hold 20-30 high quality photographs. clik! does. So, clik! is a leap forward in both cost and capacity. Zip is not cost prohibitive. I own 10 Zip disks. If I needed another, it wouldn't be a big deal to buy one. SparQ is lower in $/MB, but is triple Zip in unit cost. Zip is large enough that it fits my need for storage. SparQ would also. But I don't need a leap forward in storage size. So, SparQ's only advantage is $/MB. It has no advantage in unit cost, nor do I have a need for a much larger storage size. clik! has the $/MB AND unit cost advantages, as well as the "need for a larger solution" advantage. Conclusion- I can't tell the difference in drive costs if the salesperson does a halfway decent job. The lower cost for media is a BIG difference to me. I'm going to take the clik! equipped camera. That's my honest opinion from the average camera consumer's viewpoint. Rob Janovsky1 4+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Subject: Re: Cheap media, expensive drives... Calling flash memory a joke flies in the face of major investments made the past year by MAJOR players including Intel Siemens Thomson Hitachi NEC MEC Samsung Toshiba and more ... tens of billions of dollars are being invested in flash memory fabs. I think these people must know SOMETHING. For Microsoft to have CF required in their Auto and Palm PC's says they know SOMETHING. For Psion to have a flash MMC slot in their OS says they KNOW. For every major telecom company in the world endorse flash says they are INFORMED. I don't get it, where is the joke? 5+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Subject: Re: Clik Stuff The other night Charlie Rose (PBS) asked Bill Gates "How many computers are out there?" Bill Gates said, "about 200 million". If there are around 13 million zips out there, then zips are in approximately 6.5% of all the computers out there. The market is barely tapped. 6+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Subject: Re: Jaz2 and Buz TMF Keeler writes:
At a $8 3/8 share price IOM has a trailing PE of 20. Anything can happen but lower than that is hard to imagine for any period of time. I totally disagree. Creative Tech has beaten estimates six quarters in a row. It's growth forecast for this year is similar in %age terms to Iomegas. With the Ensoniq acquisition, it has a dominant position in the PC sound market. It's P/E is like 12 and has languished near the single digits for a long time. Why? People hate the stock. I see nothing that would prevent Iomega from having a much lower P/E. I don't forecast that it will happen. But if they lose against Nomai and have a 1st quarter that either meets or, heaven forbid, doesn't meet estimates, the P/E could fall dramatically. I am not short, nor long, but I would not be holding these shares on the basis the stock can fall no lower. It can fall much lower. I don't know how low and I'm not saying it's going fall even a nickel. But I think everyone should be aware of the high risks right now surrounding Iomega. None have to do with clik. All, though, are real. Mark 7+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Subject: Re: Cheap media, expensive drives...
Flash is so expensive that it is cost prohibitive. I will not buy any more than one or two flash cards because they cost so much. I will not store my old flash cards and keep buying more. With clik!, I can do this. It is cheaper in both $/MB, and unit cost per "roll". Flash does not offer sufficient capacity to hold 20-30 high quality photographs. clik! does. So, clik! is a leap forward in both cost and capacity. Clik is not out today. Flash is getting a lot cheaper. When I first looked into flash just a couple years ago, it was $40/MB. Now it's $8/MB at retail (sometimes as much as $20, yes). Flash capacities are rising faster than clik capacities. There are 160MB flash cards. Flash is really easy to offload into a PC. You don't need to store "rolls" of film. That is pre-digital talk. With big enough flash cameras, your whole vacation fits inside the camera, then you offload at home, analogous to dropping off film at the drugstore for processing. Folks, if all else was equal, yes clik would win. But no cameras have clik for a reason. The non-volatile, non-magnetic nature of indestructible flash cards works for camera makers and people. Fast forward to $0.50/MB flash (two generations away) vs. $0.1/MB clik. The flash camera has like 100MB in it for the same price as the clik drive, $50. If clik were as entrenched as Zip, I'd agree with y'all. I don't see the "superior" HiFD unseating Zip. Hell, look at how hard it is to unseat the floppy! With 100MB in the camera, who needs "rolls"? That's 100 1MB images, which sounds pretty good to me. If you need more, at $.50/MB, that 20MB flash cart is only $10... We are in 2001-02 in this scenario. What is the clik installed base by then? It has no market wins yet. HPC makers are going flash (adding up to 16MB today and holding all the apps on them). Camera makers are going flash. I would love to see Iomega make this succeed. I just don't see how they are going to right now. Mark 8+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Subject: Pricing I have been very disappointed in IOM's management decisions for the last 18 months, and have finally lost confidence in the company, sold my stock, and reinvested in something else. The reasons have been discussed in this group and by the Fool (too much spent in the wrong places at the wrong times with poor content on advertising that misses the point, overhyping products that, as yet, have no real applications (Clik!), not giving proper earnings warnings, etc). I also feel strongly, thought many (perhaps most) disagree with me, that IOM is being penny wise and pound foolish. In addition to failure to reduce component count and cost on their products, I feel, MOST STRONGLY, that IOM is overpricing Zip and Jaz (and Jaz2) media. Following Microsoft's model from the late '80s and thereafter of selling 1,000,000 of something at $300 rather than 1,000 at $1000, you make up for the drop in prices in volume. These are glorified floppies, people! I am in the position to buy as many Zip disks, or other media, as I want, but I resent the prices. They are too high. I think that if IOM would cut the prices of the Zip media, in particular, by 50% to 75%, they would see an explosion in demand, and actually achieve the replacement for the 1.44 Mbyte floppy (which they HAVE NOT accomplished, and, by now, are not likely to do so if they don't do somthing drastic - something better will soon come along). If they don't watch it, someone will take advantage of this situation and give them a KO punch before they know what hit them. Just my opinion. Ron Walker 9+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Subject: Re: Pricing From ronwalkr:
I think that if IOM would cut the prices of the Zip media, in particular, by 50% to 75%, they would see an explosion in demand, and actually achieve the replacement for the 1.44 Mbyte floppy (which they HAVE NOT accomplished, and, by now, are not likely to do so if they don't do somthing drastic - something better will soon come along). No, no, no. I own a Zip. I still only have 3 disks. You could make the darn things $2 and I don't need any more. When I start using Buz, Recordit, a digital camera, downloading more off the web......... I'll use more disks. This ad campaign is designed to inspire us to new disk consumption levels. Teach us to think "outside the box" when using the awsome power of todays computers. They're not just for writing letters or sending e-mail any more! How many people do we all know that fit that description? When the time is right, the prices will come down. If they do it any sooner, they are leaving our (stockholders) money on the table. That's why Sparq is not going any where. I do not need a damn 1 gig cartridge! I can't fill up a Zip disk now. The people who do need at least a gig in their business also need the speed and reliability of a JAZ(as opposed to a Sparq). They are willing to pay more for it. Pricing is not as simple as "lower it and they will buy more". It depends on the product. Bob 10+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Subject: Re: COMPUTER SALES (A BIG PIE) Rob, love the enthusiasm, but wish you'd reconsider the cure-all you seek for our stockprice...
Where the hell is the Zip 200 Sony killer????? I'd like to go on record as opposing a 200-megabyte Zip-branded product any time soon. I believe that a "Zip 200" would injure Iomega's commanding market positioning as follows:
Except to the relatively small handful of "capacity zealots" who score all tech products based upon engineering specs rather than consumer values, the 200MB Hi-FUD just isn't a very compelling marketing package. Iomega would be wrong to break faith with its original vision now. Bob Sutton 11+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Subject: Price point plans I tried to summarize some of the comments by KE in the Q4 calls for 96 and 97 about pricing. Supports the following;
The second-half 1996 price reductions were the first step on the path to getting the external Zip drive to $99. Q4 97 Quotes from KE
Although we don't have first quarter plans to further reduce pricing, our goal remains to by getting the drive to an everyday everywhere $99 street price. We will continue to analyze market demand to determine when we fire this bullet. I hope that ZipPlus gets to $99. Jim 12+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Subject: IMHO, clik=light bulb First of all, I'd just like to remind everybody to take a deep breath before posting. I'd hate nothing more than to see MarkRogo change from a great thinker and poster into a paranoid critic as Hypemenot became in his later days. Everybody can post their opinion here, and neither praise nor criticism should be an indicator of somebody being a good or bad person. Preaching aside, here's an interesting theory I thought of today on clik!, from my position as an average amateur camera user. clik vs flash memory= electric light bulb vs oil lamps That's right, I really think that it's that different, and that the benefits are that great between the two. Of course, there's never going to be hundreds of clik drives in anybody's house, but the point stands. Here's my thinking... Lamps (oil, I'm neglecting gas lamps for the sake of simplicity)- pain in the butt, fire hazard, dim, had to keep refilling, keep plenty of oil on hand, couldn't be left unattended, expensive, if you were to leave home you had to take extra oil with you or run out. OTOH, very little infrastructure to buy, everybody had one. Electric lights- easy, turn a switch, leave it unattended, no fire hazard, one bulb lasts many hours, bright, keep a few extra bulbs on hand, if you leave home you just take an extra bulb/battery. OTOH, you had to buy the infrastructure- electricity wiring in your house, electrical fixtures also needed, nobody else had one. Flash- pain in the butt, expensive, small capacity, replacements cost a ton, if you leave home you need to take your computer with you or your card fills up (assuming you don't want to carry several hundred $'s of extra cards), even at home you need to go through the hassle of emptying the card before using again when it's full. OTOH, there's a slot in all digital cameras for flash, and it's the most common method right now. clik!- easy, inexpensive, higher capacity, replacements cheap also, if you leave home you just load up on disks, at home, the disks can pile up until you get a chance to empty them. OTOH, I need to pay extra for a built in drive, and it's not a common method right now. We all know who won the lamp vs light bulb battle. Once light bulbs were out, it was an instant success. People were scrambling to "upgrade". In my opinion, clik! is going to meet with the same enthusiasm, albeit from a much smaller market. I need to reiterate that from my position as an "average consumer" of digital cameras, I see NO REASON WHATSOEVER to stay with flash memory when I have a built in clik as an option. The "solid state vs moving parts" argument doesn't cut it for me. I understand the argument and it doesn't convince me, so how to convince the even less informed consumer who says, "well heck, film cameras have moving parts, and I never had a problem"? Saying there are adapters for the floppy drive makes some headway, but the multitude of adapters promised for clik! erases that argument rather quickly. The issue of the extra drive cost was addressed in my previous post- if a built in drive is $100, and you subtract the cost of the flash card, you're left with a net $50-$75 increase. Tell me that I am now able to take much higher resolution images (which I am, or should be if the OEM's are designing them properly- if I've got 40MB capacity it darn well better take advantage with better pix), and I'm sold. I'll pay the $75 for a clik considering all the other advantages it gives me. What, then, is my reason to get flash and not clik? IMO, this isn't like Zip where file sizes are going to get bigger indefinitely. Once you've got a high resolution, lifelike image, that's as large as the file's going to get. Hey, file sizes may even come down with new compression techniques, etc. So the argument that clik doesn't give room to expand (or maybe only to 60 or 80MB) doesn't fly either. Anyway, by the time I needed something bigger than 40MB (as an average consumer), let alone 40MB of flash is less than $10, is FAR down the road. At least longer than the life I expect out of a camera (5 years?). I'm not going to put off buying a digital camera for 5 years to wait for flash prices to come down when I can buy clik and get all of its advantages right now. The only reason I can see for me to buy a flash equipped camera is because that's the only thing with a track record right now. clik! is a new product, flash has been around for years. But hey... somebody's got to be the first to try it... When I buy a digital camera, it will have a clik! (or similar removable storage) drive built in. It will not have flash. Period. THAT'S NOT BECAUSE I OWN IOM, IT'S BECAUSE I SEE NO SIGNIFICANT VALUE IN FLASH OVER CLIK!!! I'm going on vacation for a week now, so I won't be able to see any responses for a few days. I'm also sad to miss the great debate that seems to be going on elsewhere on the board. But when I come back, I'd love to be able to read any good reasons for me to choose flash over clik. Rob Janovsky1
_______________________________ End Report. Posts covered through 9:00pm ET 3/6/98. _______________________________
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