by John Boyd

Is the 1.44mb floppy disk a wimpy left over from the 1980s that has no business sharing the same box with today's 4GB hard drives and DVD-RAM disks? That's the view of three competing companies -- Iomega, Imation, and Sony -- each on a crusade to replace the aging floppy disk with more respectable, beefed-up storage technologies worthy of users' needs in the late '90s.

"Many people are no longer using floppies," claims Jon Robison, director of marketing at Iomega Japan. "We did research four years ago that shows they're gathering dust on the shelves. Most of the ten top PC vendors recognize this, but they're afraid to ship PCs without a floppy."

Iomega is the Utah-based manufacturer of the popular Zip drive, one of the floppy's new challengers. A Zip disk holds a nice round 100MB of data, and Robison reports that Iomega has shipped over 12 million drives in the past several years.

The great majority of these Zip drives, though, has gone into what is called in the trade the "aftermarket": peripherals purchased as an addition to the standard computer. The floppy disk drive, by contrast, is still built into most computers as part of the basic architecture, so there are hundreds of millions of floppy drives spinning in PCs around the globe today. Consequently, Iomega is now working to leverage its strength in the aftermarket to grab a piece of the built-in action -- even though the Zip is incompatible with the floppy.

Other contenders
Iomega is not alone. Both Sony and Imation, a computer media manufacturer spun off from Minnesota-based 3M Corporation, have similar aims.

Imation's offering is the SuperDisk (previously called the LS-120). A single SuperDisk holds 120MB of data, and the SuperDisk drive is backward-compatible with the floppy -- i.e., it can also read standard floppies. Imation is being helped in its efforts by Hitachi Maxell, another media manufacturer, which is acting as a second source supplier of the disks. They are joined by hardware makers Matsushita Kotobuki, Mitsubishi Electric, and NEC, which manufacture the drives.

Misao Ichimura, marketing manager in Imation KK, refutes Iomega's charge that the venerable floppy is obsolete. "We also conducted very thorough research with different kinds of users," says Ichimura. "It's true that some people responded as Iomega says, but these were mostly high-end users." The rest of the respondents in Imation's surveys said that the floppy is still "very important" or "somewhat important."

Analysts tend to agree with these findings. The floppy disk has "almost become a disposable media," according to Masaki Suzuki, a data storage analyst with Data-quest Japan. "The media is so cheap now, around \20 or \30, and its interchangeability [between most PCs] means it has great longevity."

On the other hand, Suzuki admits that PC vendor Micron Electronics has now made the Zip the bootable Drive A on some of its models. This is a move that could boost the acceptance of the Zip.

But Sony, for one, is not impressed. "PC manufacturers still need a floppy drive," says Masaharu Yanaga, a product planning manager in Sony's data storage division. "Sony invented the 3.5-inch floppy drive. Now we've positioned the HiFD as its replacement."

Sony announced the HiFD last October. As with the SuperDisk, the HiFD drive is backward-compatible with floppy disks, but HiFD disks boast a big, fat 200MB capacity. Not only does the HiFD have the highest capacity among the three would-be usurpers of the floppy throne, but it is also the fastest. The HiFD's 3.6MB per second data transfer rate easily outpaces the 1.4MB per second rate of the ZipPlus, Iomega's recently upgraded faster version of the original Zip, and is a hands-down winner over the SuperDisk's slow 650KB per second data transfer rate. These superior features, says Yanaga, make the HiFD ideal for all aspects of computing, from data distribution to high-speed data backups.

The case against single sourcing
Like Imation, Sony has done a good job of rounding up other experienced OEM (original equipment manufacturer) supporters to its cause. Sony is partnering with FujiFilm, which supplies the ATOMM (Advanced super-Thin layer and high-Output Metal Media) technology that makes the high capacity of both the HiFD and Zip disks possible; FujiFilm will second-source the media. Sony has also lined up Alps Electric and TEAC Corp. as additional HiFD drive makers to supply PC vendors.

"The OEM market doesn't like a single source," stresses Sony's Yanaga. "And only Iomega supplies the Zip media." This is something Imation can agree on. "We think single-sourcing is risky for OEMs," says Hiroshi Koshida, OEM sales and business development manager. "Multiple sources are best for both the media and the devices."

In response, Robison notes that Iomega has licensed hardware manufacturing of the Zip drives for the built-in market to NEC and Matsushita Communications Industry (MCI), a Matsushita Electric subsidiary. As for the disks, he adds, "I've never heard an OEM complain about the media side being single-sourced. We've chosen not to license disk production, but we do use one or two subcontractors to manufacture it, and we have a big plant in Penang (Malaysia) making the disks."

Yet end users hardly benefit from Iomega's noncompetitive arrangement, given the relatively high cost of the Zip media. In Akihabara, a single 100MB Zip disk sells for \1,400 or more -- about the same price as a 640MB MO (magneto-optical) disk. This disparity helps explain why the MO remains far more popular than the Zip in Japan's aftermarket.

Not that the SuperDisk is any cheaper. When it can be found, the price tag is almost \1,800 per disk. Imation argues that given its relatively small shipment numbers so far (about one-eighth those of the Zip), prices are unavoidably high, but will come down as volumes increase.

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