Media please
contact:
Chris Romoser, Iomega Corporation, (858)795-7148 romoser@iomega.com
Analyst/Investors, please contact:
Jim Recob, Iomega Corporation, (801)332-4430 recob@iomega.com
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Iomega Announces Strategic Relationship with SONICblue's
Rio Division for Future Technology Offerings
ROY, Utah, March 27, 2001
- Iomega Corporation (NYSE: IOM), a global leader in
data management solutions, announced today that it will
work with Rio, a division of SONICblue Incorporated
(Nasdaq: SBLU), to incorporate Iomega's internal 100MB
PocketZipTM drive into future Rio® offerings.
"Even before we announced our new 100MB PocketZip
drive earlier this month, we knew we were going to create
excitement among industry leaders," said Bruce
Albertson, president and CEO, Iomega Corporation. "It's
gratifying to be starting at the top with Rio, the pioneer
and market leader in portable digital audio players,
as our first 100MB PocketZip OEM partner."
Iomega's new PocketZip 100MB drive uses matchbook-sized
100MB disks that are protected from scratches by a durable
metal shell. PocketZip 100MB disks will retail for as
little as $10 each, lowering the cost of removable storage
to as little as ten cents per megabyte in an easily
swappable and sharable format.
"Iomega has done its homework on the new PocketZip
drive," said Jim Cady, president of Rio. "We
think it will be a solid addition to the mix of storage
options we plan to offer in the future."
PocketZip 100MB disks are fully rewritable and do not
need to be physically flipped in the drive to read their
full capacity. PocketZip-based devices can also double
as an external storage device when connected to a computer,
making them an ideal portable alternative for backing
up, editing and updating large files. The new 100MB
PocketZip drive is an addition to Iomega's existing
line of 40MB drives and disks, which Iomega will continue
to manufacture and support.
"We think the combination of the technologies
and brands of Iomega and Rio will be a great one-two
punch," said Doug Collier, senior vice president,
marketing and product management, Iomega Corporation.
"Our Iomega HipZip player has already quickly driven
acceptance of the PocketZip platform with its skip-free
reliability and affordability. Now we're enabling Rio
to offer future customers the cost advantage of 100MB
PocketZip music disks for creating portable digital
music collections."
Designed for a new generation of digital audio devices
and other products, PocketZip disks are serialized to
integrate with popular digital rights management (DRM)
systems from Microsoft, InterTrust, and others (support
for InterTrust's DRM has been announced and is in development).
PocketZip disks enable secure content to be downloaded
and locked to the disk itself, an option not available
with most current storage formats. With PocketZip disks,
consumers can enjoy downloading and listening to both
free and secure music or spoken word content on any
compatible player, much as they can today with their
collection of CDs.
About Rio (www.riohome.com)
Rio, a division of SONICblue Incorporated, is a pioneer
and acknowledged leader in digital audio. Focused on
delivering a family of digital audio products designed
for various lifestyles, Rio is dedicated to engineering
superior portable, home and car digital audio products
for consumers.
About Iomega
Iomega Corporation (NYSE: IOM) manufactures and markets
the award-winning Zip®, Jaz® and PocketZipTM
drives and disks, the HipZipTM digital audio player,
the FotoShowTM digital image center, LifeWorksTM software,
and Iomega QuikSyncTM software; Iomega also markets
Iomega CD-RW drives, Iomega CompactFlashTM and SmartMediaTM
cards and the Iomega MicrodriveTM miniature hard drive.
Iomega's products help people to save, share, manage
and create important information such as Internet downloads,
audio files, personal photographs, spreadsheets, and
slides, while protecting that content from viruses and
hackers. Used in homes, businesses, government and educational
facilities and by creative professionals everywhere,
Iomega storage solutions are the enabling technologies
preferred by millions. The Company can be reached at
1-888-4-IOMEGA (888-446-6342), or on the Web at http://www.iomega.com.
NOTE: The statements contained in this release regarding
development, production and distribution of products
incorporating PocketZip 100MB drives, anticipated product
availability, integration with DRM solutions, future
applications for the PocketZip 100MB drives and all
other statements that are not purely historical, are
forward-looking statements within the meaning of the
Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All
such forward-looking statements are based upon information
available to Iomega as of the date hereof, and Iomega
disclaims any intention or obligation to update any
such forward-looking statements. Actual results could
differ materially from current expectations. Factors
that could cause or contribute to such differences include,
but are not limited to, the successful completion of
product development and testing, market acceptance of,
and demand for, Rio products or PocketZip technology,
any difficulties encountered in ramping up production
or other manufacturing issues, including component availability
and pricing, co-development, production, and distribution
issues, product pricing and conformity to specifications,
dependence upon third party suppliers, implementation
of DRM solutions and availability of secured content,
competition, intellectual property rights and other
risks and uncertainties identified in the reports filed
from time to time by Iomega with the U.S. Securities
and Exchange Commission, including Iomega's Annual Report
on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2000, and
its most recent Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q.
# # #
Copyright© 2001 Iomega Corporation. All rights
reserved. Iomega, Zip, Jaz, PocketZip, HipZip, FotoShow,
Predator, QuikSync and LifeWorks are either registered
trademarks or trademarks of Iomega Corporation in the
United States and/or other countries. Microdrive is
a trademark of IBM Corporation and is used with permission.
Rio is a registered trademark of RioPort, Inc. and is
used by SONICblue under license from RioPort, Inc. Certain
other product names, brand names and company names may
be trademarks or designations of their respective owners.
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