4 ms·

Apparently 3M was a serious player back in the day on magnetic tapes and floppy diskettes. But today they are not present in a similar market (digital storage)

Apparently 3M was a serious player back in the day on magnetic tapes and floppy diskettes. But today they are not present in a similar market (digital storage) at all. I wonder what was it like to go through that timeframe, as the management and the employees, where the floppy disks were becoming obsolete. Did they purposefully took the decision to not pursue CD, flash memory market? Or was it just a shortsightedness of the management where they fell behind and eventually had to exit that market? Of course 3M still managed to be successful and today it is one of the big market cap companies...

trollbridge 11mo ago
They spun it off into Imation, as 3M’s specialty is coatings and chemicals. Storage no longer really uses those things You could say that 3M doesn’t make the things you use every day; they make the things you use better.
- hammock 11mo ago
  We call those “specialty chemicals” and it’s smaller volumes but much higher profit margins. Evonik (Germany) is another example. Things like- not the asphalt shingle, not the granules on the asphalt shingles, but a COATING ON the granule on the asphalt shingle that provides weather protection. Or, not the memory foam mattress, and not the liquid precursors that are combined to create the foam in the mattress, but an ADDITIVE to the precursors to the foam in the mattress which regulates/ensures a consistent size of foam bubbles during manufacture.
  - trollbridge 11mo ago
    Next thing you know, you're going to tell me about this company called BASF from Germany.
    - hammock 11mo ago
      Decent example of a basic (vs specialty) chemicals company, although they are huge of course and quite diversified, they make a crap ton (millions of tons) of basic stuff like propylene, ethylene, ammonia, methanol, etc
chiph 11mo ago
3M was indeed a big player in those markets. I purchased both 5.25" and 3.5" 3M floppies and they were good quality and reliable. I expect they left the market because of declining use and the entrance of much cheaper foreign manufacturers. I expect they didn't enter the flash memory market as they had no existing manufacturing base for them to build on. They would have had to rebrand another firm's chips and circuit boards.
anikom15 11mo ago
They were not in the storage market. They were in the tape market. It just so happens tape was used for storage at the time (floppy is essentially tape in a circular shape). No more tape storage, no more market for 3M.

trollbridge 11mo ago

They spun it off into Imation, as 3M’s specialty is coatings and chemicals. Storage no longer really uses those things You could say that 3M doesn’t make the things you use every day; they make the things you use better.

hammock 11mo ago
We call those “specialty chemicals” and it’s smaller volumes but much higher profit margins. Evonik (Germany) is another example. Things like- not the asphalt shingle, not the granules on the asphalt shingles, but a COATING ON the granule on the asphalt shingle that provides weather protection. Or, not the memory foam mattress, and not the liquid precursors that are combined to create the foam in the mattress, but an ADDITIVE to the precursors to the foam in the mattress which regulates/ensures a consistent size of foam bubbles during manufacture.
- trollbridge 11mo ago
  Next thing you know, you're going to tell me about this company called BASF from Germany.
  - hammock 11mo ago
    Decent example of a basic (vs specialty) chemicals company, although they are huge of course and quite diversified, they make a crap ton (millions of tons) of basic stuff like propylene, ethylene, ammonia, methanol, etc

chiph 11mo ago

3M was indeed a big player in those markets. I purchased both 5.25" and 3.5" 3M floppies and they were good quality and reliable. I expect they left the market because of declining use and the entrance of much cheaper foreign manufacturers. I expect they didn't enter the flash memory market as they had no existing manufacturing base for them to build on. They would have had to rebrand another firm's chips and circuit boards.

anikom15 11mo ago

They were not in the storage market. They were in the tape market. It just so happens tape was used for storage at the time (floppy is essentially tape in a circular shape). No more tape storage, no more market for 3M.