Embattled Iomega Corp will use next month’s PC Expo show in New York as the launch pad for its 1.8 40Mb Clik floppy drives as well as a wholesale corporate image makeover. Stung by quality problems with its Zip removable drives and subsequent resignation of CEO Kim Edwards the company’s share price has plummeted more than 50% to around $7.75 in less than six months leaving it badly in need of some hit records to tempt investors. The Roy, Utah company is gambling that Clik will be a big hit with the electronics manufacturers. Although Clik is now around a quarter behind its scheduled introduction date Iomega now has a few all- important second source manufacturers signed-up – Matsushita, NEC and Citizen Watch – and says it will announce other OEMs at PC Expo. The $200 Clik drive Iomega will unveil at the show with a couple of bundling option uses $9.95, re-writeable, rotating magnetic floppy disks encased in a stainless steel jacket which will store images and files downloaded from portable devices such as digital cameras equipped with Clik interfaces over serial or infrared connections. Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows CE will include Clik drivers. Although DEC, HP Kodak and others have applauded Clik, none has yet announced plan to incorporate miniaturized versions of the Walkman-sized external drives – which Citizen is working on – inside devices. Digital cameras, handheld PCs or even WebTV-style boxes (which Matsushita manufactures) are Iomega’s intended markets. It expects manufacturers to wait until the forthcoming holiday buying season is over until announcing plans to build new products incorporating Clik which will obsolete existing digital camera products. It’s eyeing the Sony Corp Mavica digital cameras which include 3.5 drives as potential design models for Clik cameras, but using the industry’s the megapixel digital resolution display technology the Sony camera currently lacks. Iomega says it has 600 Clik evaluation units in the fields and is now producing 200 a week.
