History (1999): Tecmar Buys Tape Activity of Iomega

Iomega’s tape drives were at one time the glory of the company – 3 million units have been installed – but this segment of the market for low-cost PC tape backup solutions has suffered significantly with the arrival of new removable magnetic or optical disk drives.

The Roy, UT manufacturer has thus decided to end this activity, and just sold it off to Tecmar Technologies International for a mere $3 million.

The deal includes the rights to Ditto 2GB and Ditto Max 7GB and 10GB, although Tecmar has not acquired any of Iomega’s facilities or employees, many of whom have already left the company.

The acquisition gives Tecmar an entrée into the price/capacity segment of the network storage market to complement its current price/performance Travan line.

The Longmont, CO company intends to pursue the development of higher performance and capacity Ditto products.

This article is an abstract of news published on issue 135 on April from the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter.