Iomega flogs off Ditto

Iomega has sold its Ditto family of personal tape back-up drives to Tecmar Technologies for around $3 million. The storage specialist said the deal would allow it to focus on its other storage brands, Zip, Jaz and Clik, which the company described as "core" products (though how your entire line can be 'core' is another matter). However, Ditto was never a popular line. Getting small to medium-sized businesses to back up data is hard enough, and persuading home users to do so is almost impossible -- particularly when Iomega was targetting its Zip drives and cartridges at the same market. The move follows CEO Jodie Glore's decision to merge Iomega's professional and personal product divisions into a single, unified company structure as part of his programme to bring the company back to consistent profitability (see Iomega returns to profitability, begins reorganisation). Q4 1998 was the company's only profitable quarter last year. The income from the deal will also go a little way to offsetting the $9.5 million Iomega spent on acquiring Syquest's intellectual property earlier this year. ®