NEW YORK, June 27, 2000 (PRIMEZONE) -- Iomega Corporation (NYSE:IOM), a global leader in data management solutions, today announced that another group of MP3 development companies has joined the Clik!(TM) digital audio movement. This latest list of MP3 product developers includes LG International Corp., Rexon Technologies, RFC and Frontier Labs.
"More and more digital audio player developers are recognizing that the Clik! platform offers consumers truly unlimited listening potential because it is an inexpensive, dependable portable storage solution," said Mark Lucas, executive vice president, global marketing and product development, Iomega Corporation. "Thanks to low integration costs and an unlimited capacity advantage, these developers have seized Clik! technology as a definitive feature advantage."
Each Clik!(TM) disk holds 40MB of storage and can be purchased for an estimated street price of $9.99 (U.S.) each, when purchased in a 10-pack, compared to solid state MP3 players' 32MB flash- and smart-based media replacement cards that cost approximately $100 (U.S.) each. This overwhelming value has enabled Iomega's Clik! drive to become a popular portable format for storing personal libraries of music downloaded from the Internet and personal CD collections.
This new group of MP3 development companies joins the current list of original equipment manufacturers that will be showing various implementations of Clik!(TM) product integrations at this year's PC Expo in New York, June 27-29, 2000. Previously announced MP3 development companies incorporating Clik! drives into their audio players include Sensory Science Corporation, Addonics Technologies Corporation, Varo Vision Co. and OptoMedia Corporation.
All of these developers and manufacturers of MP3 audio players have selected Iomega's Clik!(TM) drive as the removable storage option giving consumers unlimited, inexpensive memory for their expanding digital audio collection.
"MP3 players with Clik! drives built-in give music enthusiasts virtually unlimited access to their music libraries and play lists," said Sung-Ho Chung, head of information technology, LG International Corp. "If the average user carries at least four hours of music, that equates to approximately six Clik! disks for $60.00 - or 7 1/2 32MB flash cards at $750.00. We think this will be a tremendous advantage for the players we are launching later this year in Europe."
Jean Koh, Ph.D., president, Varo Vision Co., adds, "We are extremely proud to be the first developer to work with Iomega and produce a Clik!-enabled MP3 design. We are looking forward to successful sales of Clik!-enabled MP3 players throughout the world."
Raymond Foo, product development manager, RFC Distribution, which makes the jazPiper line of MP3 players, said, "Iomega's Clik! technology is an incredible value proposition. When you consider that for approximately the same price as one 32MB flash memory card, consumers can purchase 400MB of Clik! disks, the value is unbeatable. Iomega and RFC are working on co-development strategies for integration of Clik! technology into popular MP3 DSP processing chips. Thanks to that development support, RFC has committed to building Clik! drives into their new line of MP3 players shipping in the fourth quarter of 2000."
In addition to music recording and playback, many of the MP3 players currently available or under development are offering additional functions such as voice recording, phone books, access to downloaded MS Outlook and PDA information and other features aimed at the person on-the-go. The economical and unlimited expandability of Iomega's Clik!(TM) drive meets all of those storage needs and more in today's increasingly digital life.
"We intend to build in Clik! drives into our future MP3 players, scheduled to ship in the fall of 2000," said Leslie Fong, president, Frontier Labs. "Our NEX MP3 player has become our best selling player and now its usage can be expanded with the extra storage capacity and affordability of Clik! media."
Luis Tseng, senior product development manager, Addonics, said, "We've become so excited about the potential of the Clik! technology, we have redesigned one of our platforms around the Clik! drive, making it our primary source of storage for our MP3 players. This unit will also function as a stand alone Clik! USB drive, which is scheduled to ship early this fall."
Frank Ting, vice president of research and development, Rexon Technologies Corp., Ltd., said, "Rexon is proud to support the Clik! drive platform and excited to announce our combination USB and MP3 player with Clik! built-in."
Other available MP3 players with Clik!(TM) built-in drives include the Varoman Plus from Varo Vision Co. and the first Clik!-based product, the RaveMP 2300, which will be delivered to the market by Sensory Science in July.
About Frontier Labs
Frontier Labs is a research laboratory specializing in the design and development of digital electronic devices. Their first product, NEX(TM), is a portable digital music player that can play back MP3 encoded files. NEX(TM) MP3 Player is wholly designed and developed by Frontier Labs and is not a solution purchased from other companies. Therefore, the NEX(TM) player is both unique and different from other MP3 players. Frontier Labs will continue to dedicate its efforts and energies into creating new and exciting digital audio devices. For more information regarding the NEX(TM) players visit www.frontierlabs.com or send your inquiries to info@frontierlabs.com.
About Addonics
Founded in 1989, Addonics Technologies Corporation is a member of Taiwan's Acer Group, a diversified multinational information technology conglomerate, and shares the Acer Group's commitment to providing the freshest technology to customers around the world. In the decade since its establishment, Addonics has become one of the world's foremost suppliers of computer add-on products. Addonics is not only working to enhance the computing experience of users around the globe, but also provide exceptional business opportunities for our partners. Toward these ends, the Acer Group's client-server business model allows Addonics to maintain the flexibility and responsiveness of a smaller independent company, while at the same time drawing upon the Acer Group's vast resources. The result is that Addonics has gained recognition as one of Asia's fastest-growing companies and a vital leader in the global information technology industry. Web site Address: www.addonics.com.tw.
About Rexon
Rexon Technologies has focused on External Storage Unit (E.S.U.) technology for more than 10 years. Rexon always takes the lead in developing different kinds of solutions implementing its core competence of interface technology, from Parallel, PCMCIA, USB to Firewire. Since last year, Rexon moved forward to the IA industry. It has successfully developed some AV products, such as a MP3 CD player, TV Tuner box (USB) and Home PNA (PCMCIA & USB). The Clik!(TM) MP3 (USB) player is a very important item in this category.
About Iomega
Iomega Corporation (NYSE:IOM) manufactures and markets the award-winning Zip(R), Jaz(R) and Clik!(TM) drives and disks and markets the ZipCD(TM) CD-RW drives and discs. Iomega's products help people to save, share, manage and create important information such as spreadsheets, slides, Internet downloads, audio files and personals photographs, 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 1-800-MY-STUFF (800-697-8833), or on the Web at www.iomega.com.
Special note: Statements contained in this release relating to Iomega's plans to include its Clik! drive into several OEMs MP3 players as the primary storage unit and the expected availability and functionality of the OEMs MP3 players with Iomega's Clik! drive built-in are forward-looking statements. There are a number of important factors that could cause actual events to differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements, including market acceptance of, and demand for, the OEMs MP3 players with Iomega's Clik! drive built-in, manufacturing issues, including component availability and pricing, development and distribution issues, product pricing and conformity to specifications, competition, intellectual property rights and other risks as identified in Iomega's Annual Report to Stockholders for 1999 on Form 10-K, and its most recent quarterly reports filed with the SEC.
Copyright (C) 2000 Iomega Corporation. Iomega, Zip, Jaz, Clik! and ZipCD are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Iomega Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Certain other product names, brand names and company names may be trademarks or designations of their respective owners.