,
Singapore .]]
(, ) is a
Listed manufacturer of computer
Multimedia products based in
Singapore , where it was founded by
Sim Wong Hoo on
July 1 ,
1981 . The firm employs more than 5,000 people worldwide. Sim is the CEO and chairman of the company. The company's U.S. subsidiary is known as '''Creative Labs, Inc.''', a name commonly but incorrectly used to refer to the entire company.
Historically, Creative was most famous for their
Sound Blaster line of audio cards. Now they are known for their line of
Portable Multimedia Player s.
Creative began as a computer repair shop, where Sim developed an add-on memory board for the
Apple II computer. Later, they started creating customized PCs adapted for the
Chinese Language . A part of this design included enhanced audio capabilities, so that the device could produce speech and melodies. The success of this audio interface led to the development of a stand-alone
Sound Card .
In
1987 Creative released a 12-voice sound generator
Sound Card for the
IBM PC architecture, the ''Creative Music System'' (''C/MS''), featuring two
Philips SAA 1099 chips. Sim personally went from Singapore to
Silicon Valley and managed to get
RadioShack 's
Tandy division to market this card. The card was however not successful and lost the competition against the
AdLib card which was using the
Yamaha YM3812 chip (also known as ''OPL2''). In addition to being a capable gaming card, the AdLib version was also a passable
Music Synthesizer , which was a task the C/MS could not do.
Later, another attempt was made with the
Sound Blaster , a card featuring the same chip as found on the AdLib card and with additional digital audio capabilities for playing and recording digital samples. Creative used aggressive marketing, like calling the card a "stereo" component even though only the previous C/MS card offered stereo, or calling the sound producing microcontroller a "DSP", hoping to associate the product with a
Digital Signal Processor . This card soon became a
De Facto standard for sound cards in PCs for many years, mostly by the fact that it was the first to bundle what today is considered as part of sound card functionality: digital audio, onboard music synthesizer, MIDI interface and a joystick port.
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Creative's most lucrative products are the
Creative NOMAD /
Creative ZEN Digital Audio Player s, which is in the same market as the
IPod and other portable music players. The Sound Blaster line still exists with products such as
Sound Blaster Audigy ,
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 (the first sound card to be
THX certified),
Sound Blaster Audigy 4 , and
Sound Blaster X-Fi . The sound card market continues to be a solid performer for Creative; despite steady improvements to the sound controllers built into most PC motherboards, the capabilities of third-party cards tend to exceed onboard sound hardware. Currently, Creative's flagship Soundblaster product is the X-Fi Elite Pro.
The modern Creative Technology has diversified considerably; Their products include
MP3 Players ,
Speaker systems,
Webcams ,
Video Cards ,
Networking components, mobile wireless headphones
12 and a
Liquid Crystal Display (LCD).
As a corporation, Creative has recently met with some stiff competition. In July 2005, Creative Technology's shares plunged to a new all-time low of $6.25 per sharehttp://fyad.org/bdt9 as a result of poor sales in the 4th quarter of 2004 / 1st quarter of 2005 despite a US$100 million campaign to take on
Apple Computer and the highly-successful
IPod range. This represents a significant change from the $50 their shares commanded in 1998. In August 2005, it was announced that Creative's losses for that quarter amounted to US$31.9 million, going into the red for the first time in three years. Q3 FY2006 losses were US$114.3 million
3. In June 2006, their stock price was $5.22 per share (up from a low of $4.64).
In May 2006, Creative sued media player rival Apple Computer, alleging patent infringement.
4 Apple quickly filed a countersuit,
5 following the suit again in early June with a second countersuit.
6
On
August 23 2006 , Apple and Creative settled all their patent lawsuits out of court; with Apple paying Creative $100 million to licence a software patent, and Creative signing up to Apple's Made For iPod program.
BBC News on Creative settlement with Apple
Total revenues for the second quarter of fiscal year 2007, ended
December 31 2006 , were $424.4 million, which include the above $100 million paid-up license from Apple for use of the Creative ZEN patent in its products. Revenues that came from sales of products totaled $324.4 million during the quarter. With the strong sales of its flash-based ZEN players, the company achieved its goals of bringing gross margins above 20% and returning to profitability.
7
In the 2006 holiday quarter, Creative sold 2.5 million MP3 players during the period (for comparison purposes, Apple shipped about 21.066 million iPod devices onto the market during the same period). In the first half of 2006, Creative commanded about 3.7% of the digital media players market, according to NPD market research agency.
High-end audio cards, once the mainstay product for which Creative Labs became known for in the nineties – now account for only about 10% of the company’s sales. It is estimated based on the 4th quarter 2006 sales figures, that less than 1% of 57.15 million PCs sold per quarter include a discrete audio card by Creative Labs. However, according to a recent poll, a significant number of advanced users still prefer SoundBlaster over competing options - about 14% of the gamers polled opted for an audio card by Creative Technology.
On June 14, 2007 Creative Labs announced that it would voluntarily delist from the NASDAQ stock exchange. The company then would solely trade on the Singapore Exchange Securities Trading Limited.
http://www.creative.com/press/releases/welcome.asp?pid=12757
One Criticism, according to the Creative Labs forums online, is their seemingly defiant attitude to Windows Vista - Many users of the Audigy series have contacted them to see if the software pack was available - and have been told that there will be no software support for Windows Vista, except the basic sound driver.http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?board.id=soundblaster&message.id=38779&query.id=458258#M38779
TX FM 512MB]]
Creative is best-known for:
