SyQuest Technology - History

History

After 1997 SyQuest did not fare well in the market. Their core desktop publishing customers began increasingly to use CD-R media and FTP to transfer files, while Iomega's Zip drives dominated the Small Office/Home Office (SOHO) market. Over the period 1995 to 1997 sales declined, resulting in a series of losses. In the first quarter of 1997 those losses had been reduced to $6.8 million with net revenues increasing to $48.3 million. This compares to a net loss of $33.8 million, or $2.98 per share, on net revenues of $78.7 million for the same period the year before.

SyQuest filed for bankruptcy in late 1998, and portions of the company were subsequently purchased by Iomega Corp. in January, 1999. SyQuest retained the rights to sell their remaining inventory, on condition of renaming themselves SYQT in order to continue operations. For several subsequent years, a Web site at www.SYQT.com sold disk drives and media, and provided software downloads in support of those products. As of January 22, 2009, that Web site ceased to exist.

A significant reason for the losses was due to quality issues with a series of products, including the SparQ Drive and SyJet drives, that caused a large number of the drives to malfunction within just a few months of initial operation. Many users were frustrated at the lack of backwards compatibility as disk capacity increased. The life expectancy of a SyQuest disk was uncertain, as high usage could sometimes contribute to failure. The relative ease of use and inexpensive media of Iomega's Zip disks led to SyQuest's quick demise by the end of the 1990s.