Creative Technology
Creative Technology Limited SGX: C76
Nasdaq: CREAF is a listed manufacturer of computer multimedia products based in Singapore where the firm was initially founded by Sim Wong Hoo (born 1955) on July 1, 1981. It has some 4000 employees worldwide. Sim still acts as CEO of the company. The US subsidiary of the company is known as Creative Labs, Inc.
The company 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). This was probably because the Creative card had only rough square-wave sounds without filtering or interesting envelope control, while the Adlib was an expressive minature music synthesizer, more suitable for sound effects in games.
After this failure, 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 clever marketing tricks, like calling the card "stereo", while only the C/MS part offered stereo, or calling the sound producing microcontroller a "DSP", presumably to make people believe it was some sort of digital signal processor, in order to increase the appeal of the device. 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.
Currently their most lucrative products are probably the Creative Nomad/Creative Zen digital audio players, which competes with iPod and other players. The SoundBlaster line still exists, but is considered high end and is generally only purchased by audio enthusiasts or gamers (for its 3D sound engine), as almost all motherboards come with basic low-cost soundcard functionality built-in. The soundcard market is no longer as lucrative as it once was. Many motherboards come with built-in audio that are impressive to say the least, the premium ones supporting features like digital 7.1 surround sound.
The modern Creative Labs has diversified considerably; Their products include large lines of MP3 players, speaker systems, webcams, video cards, networking components, and even a Liquid crystal display (LCD).
Recently, as of July 2005, Creative Technology's shares plunged to an all-time low of $10.80 per share 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. At $10.80 a share, it is a far cry from its heyday back in 1998 where each share was worth an estimated $50. 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.
Creative is considered to be a leader in sound technologies for the PC and is thus sold by hardcore performance enthusiasts such as Alienware, Falcon Northwest and Voodoo PC.
Products
Creative is most well-known for:
- Sound cards such as the famous Sound Blaster for the PC.
- Gaming sound systems
- CD-ROM and DVD players and controller cards
- Graphics cards
- Web cameras
- Digital audio players (MP3 players) under the name of Nomad and Zen and also MuVo.
- Prodikeys, a computer keyboard-musical keyboard combination
- Optical Mice and Keyboards
Criticism
Although Audigy cards remain the most popular among gaming enthusiasts due to superior hardware sound acceleration and support for EAX digital sound processing (DSP) effects, many audiophiles and amateur musicians have found Creative products to be less than spectacular. In particular, complaints about the Audigy's advertised 24/96 Digital to Analog Converter (DAC) which operated as though it were a 16/48 DAC left many reviewers and end-users scratching their heads. This enabled Creative's competitors, M-Audio and Chaintech to gain a small but solid foothold among this niche market.
While most dominant hardware manufacturers are seen as innovators, Creative is more famous for acquiring successful technology and adding it to their own portfolio. Notable examples include:
- The AdLib sound card, which was made out of standard Yamaha components, was an easy card to clone and served as the basis for early Sound Blaster cards. Aggressive pricing of Creative products combined with added features (a game port) buried Ad Lib before the Gold version of the card could be fully brought to bear;
- The purchase of Ensoniq, one the only companies manufacturing PCI cards at the time, was quickly followed by Creative's announcement of its first PCI product;
- The legal battle with Aureal over Creative's infringement of their high-quality 3D audio patents (5,596,644 and 5,802,180). Creative lost this battle, but the legal fees ended up putting Aureal in a poor financial position. Creative later purchased Aureal and added the A3D engine to their already considerable list of gaming technology.
Creative sound cards such as the Live! and Audigy were responsible for the infamous "Squeal of Death", which caused system crashes and scores of complaints for users of Windows 2000 and Windows XP. The issue stemmed from a mutual incompatibility between those operating systems, the offending cards and some ViA chipsets. The Creative cards addressed the PCI bus in a way that was not altogether standards-compliant, and while this did result in slight performance improvements in the Pentium 3 era, some motherboards based on later chipsets exposed this issue.