History 2000: Floppy Flop of Swan/Mitsumi

This is perhaps one of the greatest flops of all time in the floppy industry.

Over 5 years ago – in other words, before Iomega’s Zip arrived on the scene – Swan Instruments (since become Swan Magnetics) perfected a high density floppy disk drive, based on Antek Peripherals technology.

It had excellent specs, 130MB of capacity and what’s more, compatibility with regular diskettes.

At the same time, however, Antek proposed the same project to Mitsumi.

The fun-loving trio ended up in a courtroom in 1995. Swan and Mitsumi ultimately reached a 4-year agreement the following year. Other accords were signed with Hitachi Maxell for the media, Tottori Sanyo and Samsung for the drive, often on display at Comdex or CeBIT.

Even Hewlett-Packard is interested. But nothing has come and nothing will come: Swan and Mitsumi are back in court in San Jose, CA, each accusing the other of breaching the agreement.

Recently, the San Jose Mercury News revealed that the 2 companies reached a settlement. Both of them retain the rights to the drive technology, while Mitsumi has paid $25 million to the now-dormant start-up Swan, which in turn still hopes to use the sum to get the project off the ground with other partners.

Unfortunately, it’s probably too late, and the chances for success today are slim, if not infinitesimal.

Another company, Caleb Technology, which recently invested in this sector with a low-cost compatible 144MB FDD, will also have trouble penetrating the market. Even so, its managed to land a new distributor, Addonics Technology, which also resells the rival LS-120 unit. Caleb’s device is also available for $60 from Tigerdirect.com.

Other US distributors include Digital Storage, Tech Data and SED International.

This article is an abstract of news published on issue 149 on June 2000 from the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter.