SlashNOT

Matthew writes: With two years to go, Iomega has set the stage for a massive collapse, beginning in 2004.
Iomega VP of R&D Mahmoud Mostafa explains: “We’ve got a whole new line of uncompelling and expensive products ready to go, beginning with Zip 750. CDR/W has been beating us up and taking our lunch money, and Zip 750 is our response to that. Costing nearly 20 times as much for the same amount of storage, and lacking the ability to be read everywhere, we really feel that Zip 750 is going to be the Anchor that drags us right to the bottom.”
“We rode the Zip cash cow for a decade now, and didn’t come up with a single compelling product between now and then. Remember MiniZip? It’s like Flash memory except it’s slower, has no market penetration, and it’s easy to break. Remember Jaz? Who knew hard disks were going to get so cheap that people wouldn’t need it, except those who did the standard projections? Man, that took nobody but us by surprise.”
“But just in case Zip 750 doesn’t kill us, we’ve got a bunch of higher capacity media way down the line that are guaranteed to be obsolete, incompatible, and expensive by the time we bring them to market. It’s how we plan wring ever last cent of shareholder value out before we bite it.”