Creative Technology

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Creative Technology Limited

Type	Public SGX: C76
Founded	July 1, 1981
Headquarters	Singapore
Key people	Sim Wong Hoo, Founder & CEO
Products	Multimedia, IT, Consumer electronics
Revenue	▲ US$914.91 million (2007)^[1]
Operating income	▼ US$-61.12 million (2007)^[1]
Net income	▲ US$28.19 million (2007)^[1]
Employees	5,800 (2007)^[1]
Website	www.creative.com

Creative Technology Limited (SGX: C76) is a listed manufacturer of computer multimedia products based in Singapore, where the firm was founded and now under the executive direction of Sim Wong Hoo on July 1, 1981. It has more than 5,000 employees worldwide. The American subsidiary of the company is known as Creative Labs, Inc..

1 History
- 1.1 Daniel_K Incident
2 Products
3 See also
- 3.1 Divisions and brands
4 References
5 External links

[edit] History

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 in Chinese. 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 standalone 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 the product.^[2] The card was, however, unsuccessful and lost to AdLib.

Later, another attempt was made with the Sound Blaster. This card had the Yamaha YM3812 chip (also known as OPL2) that was found on the AdLib card, as well as audio capabilities for playing and recording digital samples. Creative used aggressive marketing strategies, from calling the card a "stereo" component to calling the sound producing micro-controller a "DSP", hoping to associate the product with a digital signal processor. The 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 is now considered to be a part of a sound card system: digital audio, on-board music synthesizer, MIDI interface and a joystick port.

On April 1999, Creative launched the NOMAD line of digital audio players that would later introduce the MuVo and ZEN series of portable media players.

On March 22, 2005, The Inquirer reported that Creative Labs had agreed to settle in a class action lawsuit that was filed because of the way its Audigy and Extigy soundcards were marketed. Creative has offered customers who purchased the cards up to a $62.50 reduction on the cost of their next purchase with Creative, while the lawyers involved in filing the dispute against Creative will receive payment of approximately $470,000.^[3]

In 2007, Creative voluntarily delisted itself from NASDAQ, which had the symbol of CREAF.^[4] Its stocks are now solely on the Singapore Exchange (SGX-ST).

[edit] Daniel_K Incident

In late March of 2008, Creative experienced a massive public relations backlash in response to a post by the Vice President of Corporate Communications, Phil O'Shaughnessy.^[5]^[6] In a message posted to the Creative public discussion forums, O'Shaughnessy requested that a user named "Daniel_K" cease distributing modified versions of the drivers for Creative hardware. Daniel_K, a well-known member of the Creative community, modified official drivers in order to allow compatibility on Windows Vista. O'Shaughnessy took particular issue with the fact that the modified drivers "run on other products for which they are not intended" as well as the fact that Daniel_K was soliciting donations from users in return for his time spent working on them. In addition to demanding that Daniel_K respect Creative's "legal rights in this matter", they also terminated all forum threads regarding Daniel's modified drivers.