Two well-known office brands bought
These are not very big deals, but they are companies that have been around for a while in the tech market and it is interesting to see them go.
Iomega
First, Iomega, the originator of the Zip drive in the 1990s and (in the 1980s) the Bernoulli box, was bought out by data storage giant EMC, the leader in the data storage segment. The price is $213 million. EMC beat out a consortium of Chinese storage makers.
The move is one into the consumer market by EMC, which has mostly been involved at the high end. EMC has made a number of strategic buys over the last few years, both in hardware and software (security and data management). The key market is for network-attached storage (NAS), an area where HP and Dell are now the significant players. The idea is that EMC can harness its excellent intelligent backup software with the position Iomega has in small businesses.
A decade ago, Iomega had a gross income of $1.7 billion, as it was one of the few vendors of removable storage. But the ubiquity CDs, DVDs, flash memory, and the low cost of server storage have eroded the Zip and Jaz drives to nothing. The company nearly went bankrupt a few years ago. T^EH company managed to save itself by specializes in managed storage for small businesses and through its REV drive format, a removable hard disk that holds up to 120GB.
Iomega's rise and fall is a function of the amazing changes in the storage industry over the past two decades. I remember when storage meant incredibly expensive Control Data disk packs or, on the computer, single-sided floppy disks and even cassette tapes. Now hard disk dives on home computers can hold over 100GB of data.
Danka
The other move this week is the purchase of copier dealer chain Danka Office Imaging by one of its suppliers, Konica Minolta. The US company is a division of UK-based Danka Business Systems PLC, which it is planning to dissolve. The deal was for $240 million.
The story is similar to Iomega. Danka (which is 31 years old) was once a major power in the copier industry, with a wide network in North America and Europe. In 2006, it sold off its European operations to Ricoh, another major copier manufacturer, for $210 million. Last year it lost almost $30 million.
For Konica Minolta, the deal was part of a campaign for it to move up into the first tier of copier companies, to join rivals Canon, Ricoh, and Xerox. The move was also a reaction to Xerox's buyout of copier retail chain Global Imaging last year, as more and more the copier manufacturers swallow up the most profitable part of dealer layer that stands between them and the customer. Part of this is to serve national and international clients, as only the big can serve the big.
Konica Minolta was formed by the 2003 merger of Japanese electronics/copier companies Konica and Minolta. Over the last two years, the company has left the camera and film industries, so that it is more than ever a copier company.
