Leading European OEMs to Offer PCs with LS-120 Drives This Spring

Oakdale, Minn. -- (Feb. 7, 1997) -- Plans to establish LS-120 technology as the replacement for the 1.44 MB floppy standard gained more momentum today as two leading PC original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG and Fujitsu ICL Computers, Ltd., announced plans to integrate LS-120 drives into their respective PC lines.

The announcement was made today at a European press event in Paris, hosted by Imation Corp. (NYSE: IMN), the new imaging and information company recently spun-off by 3M. Imation, a co-developer of LS-120 technology, manufactures and markets the 3M-brand LS-120 Diskette.

Siemens Nixdorf announced that it will offer LS-120 drives in its Scenic Pro commercial PC line and its Scenic Celsius workstation PC line beginning in April 1997. Both lines are designed for business users with requirements for speed, storage capacity and multimedia communications capabilities.

Fujitsu ICL plans to provide LS-120 drives across its professional ErgoPro PC range throughout Europe in the first quarter of 1997, citing a response to customers who are increasingly adopting new interactive PC applications that create high-capacity multimedia data.

"The capacities of conventional 1.44 MB and 720 KB diskettes are reaching their limits, particularly as graphic and image files become more prevalent in today's computing environment," said Rolf Kleinwächter, product marketing leader for professional PCs, Siemens Nixdorf. "We believe that LS-120 technology has the capability of becoming a new industry standard. The LS-120 storage standard benefits from broad industry support of important OEM manufacturers and, most important, provides backward compatibility to several billion 3.5-inch diskettes already installed in the market."

"Our corporate and business customers have requested easy-to-use, common and widely adopted high-capacity removable storage solutions to share data and transfer information between several users," said Glen Koskela, product marketing manager of professional PCs for Europe, Fujitsu ICL. "We believe LS-120 technology provides a good platform in its capacity range of removable devices for all our customers."

Siemens Nixdorf and Fujitsu ICL become the newest PC OEMs to offer LS-120 drives as the internal, standard replacement for the 1.44 MB floppy drive. Compaq Computer Corp. (NYSE: CPQ), one of the co-developers of LS-120 technology, broadened its LS-120-based Deskpro models of commercial PCs last year.

"The market leadership positions of Siemens Nixdorf and Fujitsu ICL provide a strong presence for LS-120 technology in key European markets," said Ray Meifert, director, PC Markets Segment, Imation. "The impressive marketing, distribution and sales capabilities of both companies will contribute a great deal to the effort by Imation and other leading companies to deliver the benefits of LS-120 technology to millions of PC users around the world."

The announcements follow recent, separate announcements from LS-120 drive makers Matsushita-Kotobuki Electronics Industries, Ltd. (MKE) and Mitsubishi Electric Corp. that their respective production facilities are capable of producing LS-120 drives in high volume -- up to 500,000 drives per month by each company. In another recent announcement, OR Technology disclosed a strategic alliance with Kaifa Group, one of the largest computer component manufacturing companies in China, to mass produce an ultra slim-line LS-120 drive for notebook computers in 1997.

Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG, Paderborn, Germany, is the largest European IT supplier. Siemens Nixdorf was formed in 1990 by the merger of the Data and Information Systems Group of Siemens AG, Munich, and Nixdorf Computer AG, Paderborn.

Fujitsu ICL Computers Ltd., Bracknell, England, is an independent company with Fujitsu, Ltd., Japan, as a major shareholder. Fujitsu ICL manufactures, sells and markets PCs, server systems and associated system software required to optimize their operation.

Other LS-120 companies include Compaq, MKE, Imation, OR Technology, Mitsubishi Electric Corp., and Hitachi-Maxell, Ltd. Additional information about LS-120 technology is available via a new World Wide Web site, http://www.ls-120.com.

Imation Corp. supplies a variety of products and services worldwide for the information processing industry, specializing in imaging applications and information storage. Imation is the world's leading supplier of branded, removable media for data storage applications. The business units that make up Imation had 1995 revenues of $2.2 billion while part of 3M. The company employs approximately 9,400 people worldwide and is based in Oakdale, Minn.

Additional information about Imation is available on the company's website at http://www.imation.com, or by toll-free telephone at 1-888-466-3456.

Copyright 1996 Imation. All rights reserved.