Verbatim is a brand for

storage media Data storage is the recording (storing) of information (data) in a storage medium. Handwriting, phonographic recording, magnetic tape, and optical discs are all examples of storage media. Biological molecules such as RNA and DNA are cons ...

and

flash memory Flash memory is an Integrated circuit, electronic Non-volatile memory, non-volatile computer memory storage medium that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. The two main types of flash memory, NOR flash and NAND flash, are named for t ...

products currently owned by CMC Magnetics Corporation (CMC), a Taiwanese company that is known for

optical disc An optical disc is a flat, usuallyNon-circular optical discs exist for fashion purposes; see shaped compact disc. disc-shaped object that stores information in the form of physical variations on its surface that can be read with the aid o ...

manufacturing. Formerly a subsidiary of Mitsubishi Chemical, the global business and assets of Verbatim were sold to CMC Magnetics in 2019 at an estimated price of $32 million USD. Originally an American company and known for its

floppy disk A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, a diskette, or a disk) is a type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined with a ...

s in the 1970s and 1980s, Verbatim is now known for its recordable optical media.

History

The original Verbatim first started in

Mountain View, California Mountain View is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States, part of the San Francisco Bay Area. Named for its views of the Santa Cruz Mountains, the population was 82,376 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Mountain V ...

, in 1969, under the name Information Terminals Corporation, founded by Reid Anderson. It grew quickly and became a leading manufacturer of floppy disks by the end of the 1970s, and it was soon renamed Verbatim. In 1982, it formed a floppy disk

joint venture A joint venture (JV) is a business entity created by two or more parties, generally characterized by shared ownership, shared returns and risks, and shared governance. Companies typically pursue joint ventures for one of four reasons: to acce ...

with Japanese company Mitsubishi Kasei Corporation (forerunner of Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation), with the joint venture called Kasei Verbatim. Verbatim mostly struggled in the decade and was purchased by

Eastman Kodak The Eastman Kodak Company, referred to simply as Kodak (), is an American public company that produces various products related to its historic basis in film photography. The company is headquartered in Rochester, New York, and is incorporated i ...

in 1985, while its floppy partnership with Mitsubishi Kasei Corporation was still intact. It was eventually purchased fully by Mitsubishi Kasei Corporation in March 1990, after eight years in a joint venture. Many new products were launched under the new Japanese ownership, and the brand saw immense growth in the decade. Mitsubishi Kagaku Media was founded in October 1994 as a subsidiary through the merger of Mitsubishi Kasei and Mitsubishi Petrochemical, resulting in Mitsubishi Chemical. The new company absorbed the former American company and created a new Japanese entity, whilst the old Verbatim brand lived on. In addition, Mitsubishi Kagaku Media sold products under the

Freecom Freecom is a German manufacturer of computer peripherals. Its products include USB hard disks (where the actual hard drive is manufactured by Samsung and others), USB flash drives, USB DVB-T television receivers and a data recovery In computin ...

brand. Freecom was founded in Berlin, Germany, in 1989 and had been based in the Netherlands when it was purchased by Mitsubishi Chemical Holdings in September 2009. The company was selling products under the

Mitsubishi The is a group of autonomous Japanese multinational companies in a variety of industries. Founded by Yatarō Iwasaki in 1870, the Mitsubishi Group traces its origins to the Mitsubishi zaibatsu, a unified company that existed from 1870 to 194 ...

brand in Japan from 1994 to 2010, when Verbatim fully replaced it.

Key dates

* 1969: Information Terminals Corporation (ITC), the predecessor to Verbatim, is founded in Mountain View, California, U.S. * 1976: ITC begins manufacturing magnetic tape for use in its cassettes and floppy disks. * 1978: ITC is officially renamed Verbatim. * 1979: Verbatim goes public; sales grow to $36 million. * 1985:

announces its $174 million bid for Verbatim. * 1990: Mitsubishi Kasei Corporation acquires Verbatim. * 1992: The company buys Carlisle Memory Products. * 1994: Mitsubishi Kasei Corporation and Mitsubishi Petrochemical Co., Ltd merge to create Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation. End of the original Verbatim Corporation as it is turned into a new subsidiary, Mitsubishi Kagaku Media (MKM). Verbatim brand replaced by Mitsubishi in Japan. * 1994: Verbatim enters a joint venture with

Sanyo is a former Japanese electronics manufacturer founded in 1947 by Toshio Iue, the brother-in-law of Kōnosuke Matsushita, the founder of Matsushita Electric Industrial, now known as Panasonic. Iue left Matsushita Electric to start his own bu ...

Laser Products. * 1995: Acquires

Laser Technologies A laser is a device that emits light through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation. The word ''laser'' originated as an acronym for light amplification by stimulated emission of radi ...

and

Ecotone An ecotone is a transitional area between two plant communities, where these meet and integrate. Examples include areas between grassland and forest, estuaries and lagoon, freshwater and sea water etc. An ecotone may be narrow or wide, and it ma ...

. * 2005: Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation (MCC) merges with Mitsubishi Pharma Corporation to form Mitsubishi Chemical Holdings Corporation. * 2007: Acquires SmartDisk. * 2009: Acquires

. * 2009: Verbatim brand returns to the Japanese market for the first time since 1994. * 2010: Mitsubishi Kagaku Media unifies all recordable discs products under one umbrella ''Verbatim'' brand in the Japanese market. * 2019: Agreement to be bought by CMC. * 2020: CMC acquires Verbatim/Mitsubishi Kagaku Media.

Notable info about historical products

* In 1969, the first digital-grade tape cassettes were released. * 8" diskettes were first released in 1974. * In 1991, Verbatim released the world's first 3.5" magneto-optical disk. * Verbatim started its successful foray into the optical disc market in 1993 with

CD-R CD-R (Compact disc-recordable) is a digital media, digital optical disc data storage device, storage format. A CD-R disc is a compact disc that can only be Write once read many, written once and read arbitrarily many times. CD-R discs (CD-Rs) ...

media. * In 1997, Verbatim released the world's first

CD-RW RW (Compact Disc-Rewritable) is a digital media, digital optical disc data storage device, storage format introduced by Ricoh in 1997. A CD-RW compact disc (CD-RWs) can be written, read, erased, and re-written. CD-RWs, as opposed to CDs, r ...

format media. * In 2001, Verbatim released the world's first DVD+R format media. * Introduced the first 8.5 GB

DVD+R DL The DVD (common abbreviation for digital video disc or digital versatile disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kin ...

products in 2004, followed by DVD-R DL in 2005. * Verbatim launched a new product range of

LED A light-emitting diode (LED) is a semiconductor device that emits light when current flows through it. Electrons in the semiconductor recombine with electron holes, releasing energy in the form of photons. The color of the light (corresp ...

lights in 2010. Minidata Cartridge Verbatim DC 2120 QIC 80 Iomega Tape 250.JPG, Minidata Cartridge formatted for Iomega Tape 250, 1999 Verbatim ST-600 XD 1.jpg, Verbatim ST 600 XD High Density Streamer Cassette 2015 Dysk zewnętrzny Verbatim.jpg, An

external HDD A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magnet ...

, 2015

Products

Current and former products

Solid-state drive A solid-state drive (SSD) is a type of solid-state storage device that uses integrated circuits to store data persistently. It is sometimes called semiconductor storage device, solid-state device, or solid-state disk. SSDs rely on non- ...

s (SSDs) *

Floppy disk A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, a diskette, or a disk) is a type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined with a ...

s *

Magnetic tape Magnetic tape is a medium for magnetic storage made of a thin, magnetizable coating on a long, narrow strip of plastic film. It was developed in Germany in 1928, based on the earlier magnetic wire recording from Denmark. Devices that use magnetic ...

s *

MultiMediaCard MultiMediaCard, officially abbreviated as MMC, is a memory card standard used for solid-state storage. Unveiled in 1997 by SanDisk and Siemens, MMC is based on a surface-contact low-pin-count serial interface using a single memory stack subs ...

s *

SD card Secure Digital (SD) is a proprietary, non-volatile, flash memory card format developed by the SD Association (SDA). Owing to their compact size, SD cards have been widely adopted in a variety of portable consumer electronics, including dig ...

s * CompactFlash cards * CD-R * Digital Vinyl CD-R * CD-RW *

DVD-R DVD recordable and DVD rewritable are a collection of optical disc formats that can be written to by a DVD recorder and by computers using a DVD writer. The "recordable" discs are write-once read-many (WORM) media, where as "rewritable" discs a ...

DVD-RW DVD recordable and DVD rewritable are a collection of optical disc formats that can be written to by a DVD recorder and by computers using a DVD writer. The "recordable" discs are write-once read-many (WORM) media, where as "rewritable" discs a ...

* DVD-R DL * DVD+R *

DVD+RW DVD recordable and DVD rewritable are a collection of optical disc formats that can be written to by a DVD recorder and by computers using a DVD writer. The "recordable" discs are write-once read-many (WORM) media, where as "rewritable" discs a ...

* DVD+R DL *

DVD-RAM DVD-RAM (DVD Random Access Memory) is a DVD-based disc specification presented in 1996 by the DVD Forum, which specifies rewritable DVD-RAM media and the appropriate DVD writers. DVD-RAM media have been used in computers as well as camcorde ...

BD-R Blu-ray Disc Recordable (BD-R) and Blu-ray Disc Recordable Erasable (BD-RE) refer to two direct-to-disk recording, direct to disc optical disc recording technologies that can be recorded on to a Blu-ray-based optical disc with an optical disc ...

BD-RE Blu-ray Disc Recordable (BD-R) and Blu-ray Disc Recordable Erasable (BD-RE) refer to two direct to disc optical disc recording technologies that can be recorded on to a Blu-ray-based optical disc with an optical disc recorder. BD-R discs can ...

* HD-DVD-R *

M-Disc M-DISC (Millennial Disc) is a Write once read many, write-once Optical disc recording technologies, optical disc technology introduced in 2009 by Millenniata, Inc. and available as DVD and Blu-ray discs. Overview M-DISC's design is intended t ...

USB flash drive A flash drive (also thumb drive, memory stick, and pen drive/pendrive) is a data storage device that includes flash memory with an integrated USB interface. A typical USB drive is removable, rewritable, and smaller than an optical disc, and u ...

s * SIPRELAY Operators *

light bulbs * Gaming Accessories *

Computer mouse A computer mouse (plural mice; also mouses) is a hand-held pointing device that detects Plane (mathematics), two-dimensional motion relative to a surface. This motion is typically translated into the motion of the Cursor (user interface)#Po ...

* Keyboards

Manufacturing and marketing

Verbatim's early floppies were manufactured at a factory in

Limerick Limerick ( ; ) is a city in western Ireland, in County Limerick. It is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Munster and is in the Mid-West Region, Ireland, Mid-West which comprises part of the Southern Region, Ireland, Southern Region. W ...

, Ireland, starting 1979 (MC Infonics, sold to CMC Magnetics in the 2000s). (during the era of Mitsubishi ownership) Verbatim sold products partly produced in Verbatim and Mitsubishi's own plants in Singapore and Japan, and partly under license by Taiwanese and Indian manufacturers. Verbatim also resold relabeled products from Japanese, Taiwanese, Chinese,

Malaysia Malaysia is a country in Southeast Asia. Featuring the Tanjung Piai, southernmost point of continental Eurasia, it is a federation, federal constitutional monarchy consisting of States and federal territories of Malaysia, 13 states and thre ...

n and Indian factories (Pearl White DVD series in Europe, some CD-R not labeled Super Azo), including but not limited to products by

Taiyo Yuden is a Japanese materials and electronics company, situated in Kyobashi, Chuo, Tokyo, that helped pioneer recordable CD technology (CD-R) along with Sony and Philips in 1988. Founded 70 years ago, Taiyo Yuden currently operates factories in Japa ...

, Ritek Corporation, CMC Magnetics, Prodisc, Moser Baer, Daxon/ BenQ.

Technologies

Teflon Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) is a synthetic fluoropolymer of tetrafluoroethylene, and has numerous applications because it is chemically inert. The commonly known brand name of PTFE-based composition is Teflon by Chemours, a spin-off from ...

coating for floppy disks * '' Advanced Azo Dye Technology'' (patented Azo-Color technology), first developed 1994 * SERL (''Super Eutectic Recording Layer'') technology for rewritable media (after deleting the medium it regenerates) * TERL (''Tellurium Alloy Recording Layer'') technology for special audio CD-RWs * MABL for Blu-ray discs

References

External links

* {{Authority control 1969 establishments in North Carolina Companies based in Charlotte, North Carolina Computer companies established in 1969 Computer companies disestablished in 1985 Defunct computer companies of the United States Defunct computer hardware companies Computer storage companies Mitsubishi Chemical Holdings 1985 mergers and acquisitions 1990 mergers and acquisitions 2020 mergers and acquisitions