History (1999): Caleb Not Giving Up

After falling so far behind, can Caleb Technology, formed in 1995, still hope to carve out a niche for its 144MB floppy disk drive, the 144MB UHD – compatible with standard 1.44 MB floppy diskettes – in a market that’s already dominated by such heavyweights as Iomega and Imation? Even if low-capacity floppies remain an important market segment?

More than two years after first showing its unit, 1,000 demo drives have been manufactured in the company’s pre-production facility in Boulder, CO. Volume production is slated for this month, with 2 subcontract manufacturers whose names have only recently been released. Kaleb’s major shareholder and financier, the South Korean firm Kabool Electronics, until now mainly an HSA manufacturer, will manufacture at an annual announced rate of 1.5 million units. Manufacturers Services Ltd., in Singapore, will make just as many devices starting in January, while the Taiwanese media specialist Megamedia – which already manufactures FDs, Iomega’s Zip diskettes and Castlewood’s ORB rigid disk cartridges – will be in charge of the high density floppies.

In order to manage its big start, Caleb has secured interim funding of $3 million from Singapore investors.

This article is an abstract of news published on issue 142 on November 1999 from the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter.

Note: Caleb went bankrupt in early 2002.