Giant Drive Supplier Announces Ramp-Up to a Half-Million Drives Per Month

OAKDALE, Minn. (Nov. 18, 1996) -- Matsushita-Kotobuki Electronics Industries, Ltd. (MKE), a co-developer of LS-120 diskette technology, today announced that its manufacturing facilities have reached high-volume automated production capacity for LS-120 drives -- enabling shipments of hundreds of thousands drives per month.

"About 80 million 1.44 MB floppy drives are shipped each year, and LS-120 technology represents the logical evolution for that market," said Masato Suzuki, director, MKE. "As demand continues to heighten, we are now poised to build and ship significant quantities of drives, with volumes to reach 500,000 drives per month by mid-1997."

"With MKE's announcement, a fundamental LS-120 production milestone has been achieved," said Ray Meifert, director, PC Markets Segment, Imation Corp. "Combined with other recent developments, this announcement adds to the strengthening momentum and intensifying customer interest in LS-120 technology -- the only backward-compatible, bootable, high-capacity diskette solution now available."

Imation (NYSE: IMN), the information and imaging company recently spun off from 3M, manufactures and markets the 3M-brand LS-120 Diskette. Imation co-developed LS-120 diskette technology along with MKE, Compaq Computer Corporation, and OR Technology.

"Compaq now offers LS-120 drives as internal, standard features in several of our Deskpro PCs," said Jerry Meerkatz, vice president, PC Options Division, Compaq Computer Corporation. "MKE's announcement of full-volume drive production helps ensure a steady supply of high-quality drives to meet the growing demand."

MKE supplies PC makers with LS-120 drives manufactured at its facilities in Matsayama, Japan, where it also manufactures a significant share of the world's CD-ROM drives. The company has also announced plans to manufacture low-profile LS-120 drives for use in notebook computers in the first half of next year.

Other recent developments supporting the broadening availability of LS-120 technology include the provision of BIOS (Basic Input Output System) software support from leading suppliers Phoenix Technologies, American Megatrends, Inc. and Award Software International, Inc. The availability of this BIOS support for LS-120 technology enables the easy integration of LS-120 drives into the new systems of virtually any PC maker.

MKE is the world's leading supplier of CD-ROM drives, tape drives and other data storage peripheral devices.

Imation supplies a variety of products and services worldwide for the information processing industry, specializing in imaging applications and information storage. 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.

Copyright 1996 Imation. All rights reserved.