Iomega acquired by EMC for $213 million

Not even a month after we heard that Iomega was warming to a revised takeover bid from EMC, the two lovebirds have finally let their true feelings be known. Announced today, EMC is acquiring the famed Zip Drive manufacturer for $213 million. The final figure is nearly $7 million higher than the one proposed in March, and the all-cash agreement worked out to $3.85-per share -- 5.8-percent higher than Iomega's Tuesday closing price of $3.64. Also of note, Iomega will be picking up the tab on a $7.5 million termination fee to the shareholders for a canceled deal involving China's ExcelStor Group, and EMC stated that it didn't expect the acquisition to "have any material impact on its full-year earnings."

[Thanks, Khattab]

[Mark @ Apr 9th 2008 8:58AM]

I hope they bring back the zip drive.

[Tinu @ Apr 9th 2008 9:02AM]

But we have USB flash drives now! :)

[Mark @ Apr 9th 2008 9:06AM]

whatever.

[Matt @ Apr 9th 2008 10:28AM]

If you want a zip drive, I can send mine to you... I have the original parallel model. It's in like new condition. After all it's been protected by a very tough dust based protective layer.

[toleraen @ Apr 9th 2008 9:24AM]

The only thing the Zip drive was ever useful for (for me anyway) was installing Quake on. School administrators never locked down what could be run from those things...good times

[dj-kenpo @ Apr 9th 2008 9:19AM]

wow.
who'd of seen that one coming..

there are so many better things to spend 213 million on.

maybe it's like when someone picks up an old computer and keeps it in the garage for nostalgia sake. maybe this guy just has so much money he can do that with an entire company? because i really can't see any other reason other than nostalgia. like hell anyone in the computing world will ever buy another product from iomega. like hell any new iomega product will ever see the light of day.

[Kamokazi @ Apr 9th 2008 9:48AM]

My guess would be that EMC wants to enter consumer/retail channels and wants an established name/company to use when doing so. While the geeks may laugh at them, most people are either indifferent or don't know enough about them.

But most of it is probably just for distribution channels, customer service, tech support, branding, etc. It can be expensive and troublesome to set up a relatively large consumer brand from scratch.

I'm actually kind of excited about this. I'd like to see some cool stuff like consumer-grade SANs and whatnot come from this.

[Jay @ Apr 9th 2008 9:27AM]

emc? really? They're still viable? We are migrating away from their products... Support sucked (couldn't get the same answer twice out of the same tech on the same call), Celerra never quite worked right... Sure some of their SAN gear is ok, but most of it... meh.

[ev01 @ Apr 9th 2008 9:53AM]

Overcomplication of their product. Something that EMC and IBM have been guilty of for years.

[adam @ Apr 9th 2008 10:22AM]

Hell yeah they're viable. They own VMware.

[Jeff @ Apr 9th 2008 9:44AM]

Heh, seeing this from my RSS reader, I thought it stopped at $213.

[Dayton Rowland @ Apr 9th 2008 10:42AM]

That's about what Iomega is worth...

[adam @ Apr 9th 2008 10:02AM]

Jay... good luck with NetApp then... or one of the niche players. You can laugh at EMC but they bought VMWare for $680(ish) million and will make billions upon billions from it.

EMC still viable... hahaha. They have 12-15 billion cash money in the bank and the majority marketshare in the SAN and VTL space. They're making good headway towards the NAS market as well, and I can say from personal experience that the Celerra is a fantastic product. Your comment about EMC being viable shows that you are not wel established in the SAN / NAS marketplace anyways. Once you get a little more experience and out of first level tech support for your company you'll understand :)

[Jay @ Apr 9th 2008 10:46AM]

You're right. I'm not intimately familiar with the SAN realm. I can only speak to what we do around here, and my own experience talking to the useless EMC techs I've dealt with.
I had no idea about VMware.. when did they buy that?

[crsh @ Apr 9th 2008 12:15PM]

Given how big a deal Iomega products *used* to be before they got killed by CD/DVD burners and flash drives, $213m.. ouch, looks like a fire sale (the patents they hold are prolly worth more than the actual company at this point).

They sat on their asses for God knows how many years without doing anything about the evolving market, they probably waited too long to sell as well anyway.

[oxfdblue @ Apr 9th 2008 1:50PM]

Does EMC get the rights to the dreaded Zip Drive "Click of Death" as well?

[Cassini @ Apr 9th 2008 4:05PM]

"...And in other boring news..."

But in all seriousness, has anyone devoted even the slightest thought in considering what Iomega has been up to in the last gazillion years? What a dinosaur this company is! They haven't produced anything that's caught anyone's eye since the Zip drives, and when was that? Back in the 90's? Frankly, I'm surprised they've remained in business up to this point.

But with that said, Iomega definitely played a role in the earlier days of personal computing - back when we were rockin' floppy drives and their products were competing with those, and LS-120 drives. So their products bring back some good memories, I have to say.

Does anyone remember Iomega's Jaz drives? My dad owned one of those many moons ago. He was probably one of the few who ever did!