Creative Technology Ltd. is a

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, bor ...

an multinational technology company headquartered with overseas offices in

Shanghai Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flowin ...

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and List of cities in Japan, largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, ...

Dublin Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of the Wicklow Mountains range. At the 2016 c ...

, and

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo Coun ...

(where in the US it is known as Creative Labs). The principal activities of the company and its subsidiaries consist of the design, manufacture and distribution of digitized sound and video boards, computers and related multimedia and personal

digital entertainment Digital entertainment Industry includes, but is not restricted to, any combination of the following industries (that themselves have a considerable degree of overlap): *digital media *new media *video on demand *video games *interactive entertainmen ...

products. It also partners with mainboard manufacturers and laptop brands to embed its

Sound Blaster Sound Blaster is a family of sound cards designed by Singaporean technology company Creative Technology (known in the US as Creative Labs). Sound Blaster sound cards were the de facto standard for consumer audio on the IBM PC compatible system pl ...

technology on their products.

History

1981–1996

Creative Technology was founded in 1981 by childhood friends and

Ngee Ann Polytechnic Ngee Ann Polytechnic (NP) is a post-secondary education institution and statutory board under the purview of the Ministry of Education in Singapore. Established in 1963, the polytechnic is renowned for its business programmes. History Ngee An ...

schoolmates Sim Wong Hoo and Ng Kai Wa. Originally a computer repair shop in Pearl's Centre in Chinatown, the company eventually developed an add-on memory board for the Apple II computer. Later, Creative spent $500,000 developing the Cubic CT, an IBM-compatible PC adapted for the

Chinese language Chinese (, especially when referring to written Chinese) is a group of languages spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in Greater China. About 1.3 billion people (or approximately 16% of the ...

and featuring multimedia features like enhanced color graphics and a built-in audio board capable of producing speech and melodies. With lack of demand for multilingual computers and few multimedia software applications available, the Cubic was a commercial failure. Shifting focus from language to music, Creative developed the Creative Music System, a PC add-on card. Sim established Creative Labs, Inc. in the United States'

and convinced software developers to support the sound card, renamed Game Blaster and marketed by RadioShack's Tandy division. The success of this audio interface led to the development of the standalone Sound Blaster

sound card A sound card (also known as an audio card) is an internal expansion card that provides input and output of audio signals to and from a computer under the control of computer programs. The term ''sound card'' is also applied to external audio ...

, introduced at the 1989

COMDEX COMDEX (an abbreviation of COMputer Dealers' EXhibition) was a computer expo trade show held in the Las Vegas Valley of Nevada, United States, each November from 1979 to 2003. It was one of the largest computer trade shows in the world, usually ...

show just as the multimedia PC market, fueled by Intel's 386 CPU and Microsoft Windows 3.0, took off. The success of

helped grow Creative's revenue from US$5.4 million in 1989 to US$658 million in 1994. In 1993, the year after Creative's initial public offering, in 1992, former Ashton-Tate CEO

Ed Esber Edward M. Esber, Jr. (born 1952) is semi-retired in Park City, Utah. Ed spends his time helping the State of Utah, Utah Law enforcement and the Silicon Slopes entrepreneur community in Utah. Summary As a PC industry veteran, he pioneered the ...

joined Creative Labs as CEO to assemble a management team to support the company's rapid growth. Esber brought in a team of US executives, including Rich Buchanan (graphics), Gail Pomerantz (marketing), and Rich Sorkin (sound products, and later communications, OEM and business development). This group played key roles in reversing a brutal market share decline caused by intense competition from Mediavision at the high end and Aztech at the low end. Sorkin, in particular, dramatically strengthened the company's brand position through crisp licensing and an aggressive defense of Creative's intellectual property positions while working to shorten product development cycles. At the same time, Esber and the original founders of the company had differences of opinion on the strategy and positioning of the company. Esber exited in 1995, followed quickly by Buchanan and Pomerantz. Following Esber's departure, Sorkin was promoted to General Manager of Audio and Communication Products and later Executive Vice-President of Business Development and Corporate Investments, before leaving Creative in 1996 to run

Elon Musk Elon Reeve Musk ( ; born June 28, 1971) is a business magnate and investor. He is the founder, CEO and chief engineer of SpaceX; angel investor, CEO and product architect of Tesla, Inc.; owner and CEO of Twitter, Inc.; founder of The ...

's first startup and Internet pioneer

Zip2 Zip2 was a company that provided and licensed online city guide software to newspapers. The company was founded in Palo Alto, California as Global Link Information Network in 1995, by Greg Kouri and brothers Elon and Kimbal Musk. Initially, Gl ...

. By 1996, Creative's revenues had peaked at US$1.6 billion. With pioneering investments in

VOIP Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also called IP telephony, is a method and group of technologies for the delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. The terms Internet t ...

and media streaming, Creative was well-positioned to take advantage of the Internet era, but ventured into the CD-ROM market and was eventually forced to write off nearly US$100 million in inventory when the market collapsed due to a flood of cheaper alternatives.

1997–present

The firm had maintained a strong foothold in the ISA PC audio market until 14 July 1997 when

Aureal Semiconductor Aureal Semiconductor Inc. was an American electronics manufacturer, best known throughout the mid-late 1990s for their PC sound card technologies including A3D and the Vortex (a line of audio ASICs.) The company was the reincarnation of the, at ...

entered the soundcard market with their very competitive PCI AU8820 Vortex 3D sound technology. The firm at the time was in development of their own in house PCI audio cards but were finding little success adopting the PCI standard. In January 1998 in order to quickly facilitate a working PCI audio technology, the firm made the acquisition of Ensoniq for US$77 million. On 5 March 1998 the firm sued Aureal with patent infringement claims over a MIDI caching technology held by

E-mu Systems E-mu Systems was a software synthesizer, audio interface, MIDI interface, and MIDI keyboard manufacturer. Founded in 1971 as a synthesizer maker, E-mu was a pioneer in samplers, sample-based drum machines and low-cost digital sampling mus ...

. Aureal filed a counterclaim stating the firm was intentionally interfering with its business prospects, had defamed them, commercially disparaged, engaged in

unfair competition Unfair may refer to: * Double Taz and Double LeBron James in multiverses ''fair''; unfairness or injustice Injustice is a quality relating to unfairness or undeserved outcomes. The term may be applied in reference to a particular event or situ ...

with intent to slow down Aureals sales and acted fraudulently. The suit had come only days after Aureal gained a fair market with the AU8820 Vortex1. In August 1998, the

Sound Blaster Live! Sound Blaster Live! is a PCI add-on sound card from Creative Technology Limited for PCs. Moving from ISA to PCI allowed the card to dispense with onboard memory, storing digital samples in the computer's main memory and then accessing them in re ...

was the firm's first sound card developed for the PCI bus in order to compete with upcoming Aureal AU8830 Vortex2 sound chip. Aureal at this time were making fliers comparing their new AU8830 chips to the now shipping

. The specifications within these fliers comparing the AU8830 to the

EMU10K1 chip sparked another flurry of lawsuits against Aureal, this time claiming Aureal had falsely advertised the

's capabilities. In December 1999, after numerous lawsuits, Aureal won a favourable ruling but went bankrupt as a result of legal costs and their investors pulling out. Their assets were acquired by Creative through the

bankruptcy court United States bankruptcy courts are courts created under Article I of the United States Constitution. The current system of bankruptcy courts was created by the United States Congress in 1978, effective April 1, 1984. United States bankruptcy c ...

in September 2000 for US$32 million. The firm had in effect removed their only major direct competitor in the 3D gaming audio market, excluding their later acquisition of

Sensaura Sensaura, a division of Creative Technology, was a company that provided 3D audio effect technology for the interactive entertainment industry. Sensaura technology was shipped on more than 24 million game consoles and 150 million PCs (on soundcards ...

. In April 1999, the firm launched the

NOMAD A nomad is a member of a community without fixed habitation who regularly moves to and from the same areas. Such groups include hunter-gatherers, pastoral nomads (owning livestock), tinkers and trader nomads. In the twentieth century, the po ...

line of

digital audio player A portable media player (PMP) (also including the related digital audio player (DAP)) is a portable consumer electronics device capable of storing and playing digital media such as audio, images, and video files. The data is typically stored o ...

s that would later introduce the

MuVo The Creative MuVo (in some markets, formerly ''Creative NOMAD MuVo'') is a range of digital audio players produced by Creative Technology Limited, launched in 2002. Most models in the MuVo range use flash memory for storing data; the only excepti ...

and

ZEN Zen ( zh, t=禪, p=Chán; ja, text= 禅, translit=zen; ko, text=선, translit=Seon; vi, text=Thiền) is a school of Mahayana Buddhism that originated in China during the Tang dynasty, known as the Chan School (''Chánzong'' 禪宗), and ...

series of portable media players. In November 2004, the firm announced a $100 million marketing campaign to promote their digital audio products, including the ZEN range of MP3 players. The firm applied for on 5 January 2001 and was awarded the patent on 9 August 2005. The Zen patent was awarded to the firm for the invention of user interface for portable media players. This opened the way for potential legal action against Apple's iPod and the other competing players. The firm took legal actions against Apple in May 2006. In August, 2006, Creative and Apple entered into a broad settlement, with Apple paying Creative $100 million for the licence to use the Zen patent. The firm then joined the "Made for iPod" program. On 22 March 2005, ''

The Inquirer ''The Inquirer'' (stylized as TheINQUIRER) was a British technology tabloid website founded by Mike Magee after his departure from ''The Register'' (of which he was one of the founding members) in 2001. In 2006 the site was acquired by Dutch ...

'' reported that Creative Labs had agreed to settle in a

class action lawsuit A class action, also known as a class-action lawsuit, class suit, or representative action, is a type of lawsuit where one of the parties is a group of people who are represented collectively by a member or members of that group. The class actio ...

about the way its

Audigy Sound Blaster Audigy is a product line of sound cards from Creative Technology. The flagship model of the Audigy family used the EMU10K2 audio DSP, an improved version of the SB-Live's EMU10K1, while the value/SE editions were built with a less ...

and Extigy soundcards were marketed. The firm offered customers who purchased the cards up to a $62.50 reduction on the cost of their next purchase of its products, while the lawyers involved in filing the dispute against Creative received a payment of approximately $470,000. In 2007, Creative voluntarily delisted itself from NASDAQ, where it had the symbol of CREAF. Its stocks are now solely on the

Singapore Exchange The Singapore Exchange Limited (SGX) is a Singaporean investment holding company that provides different services related to securities and derivatives trading and others. SGX is also a member of the World Federation of Exchanges and the Asian ...

(SGX-ST). In early 2008, Creative Labs' technical support centre, located in Stillwater, Oklahoma, US laid off several technical support staff, furthering ongoing concerns surrounding Creative's financial situation. Later that year, the company faced a public-relations backlash when it demanded that a user named "Daniel_K" cease distributing modified versions of drivers for Windows Vista which restored functionality that had been available in drivers for Windows XP. The company deleted his account from its online forums but reinstated it a week later. In January 2009, the firm generated Internet buzz with a mysterious website promising a "stem cell-like" processor which would give a 100-fold increase in supercomputing power over current technology, as well as advances in consumer 3D graphics. At CES 2009, it was revealed to be the ZMS-05 processor from ZiiLABS, a subsidiary formed from the combining of

3DLabs 3Dlabs was a fabless semiconductor company. It was founded in 1994 with headquarters in San Jose, California. It originally developed the GLINT and PERMEDIA high-end graphics chip technology, that was used on many of the world's leading computer g ...

and Creative's Personal Digital Entertainment division. In November 2012, the firm announced it has entered into an agreement with Intel Corporation for Intel to license technology and patents from ZiiLABS Inc. Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of Creative, and acquire engineering resources and assets related to its UK branch as a part of a $50 million deal. ZiiLABS (still wholly owned by Creative) continues to retain all ownership of its StemCell media processor technologies and patents, and will continue to supply and support its ZMS series of chips to its customers. From 2014 to 2017, Creative's revenue from audio products have contracted at an average of 15% annually, due to increased competition in the audio space. At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas in January 2018, its Super X-Fi dongle won the Best of CES 2018 Award by AVS Forum. The product was launched after more than $100 million in investment and garnered positive analyst reports. This new technology renewed interest in the company and likely helped to raise its share price from S$1.25 to S$8.75 within a 2-week period. The company is still producing Chinese-language and bilingual software for the

market, but nearly half of the company's income is generated in the United States and South America; the European Union represents 32% of revenues, with

Asia Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an are ...

making the remainder.

Products

Sound Blaster

Creative's

was among the first dedicated audio processing cards to be made widely available to the general consumer. As 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, Sound Blaster rose to become a

de facto ''De facto'' ( ; , "in fact") describes practices that exist in reality, whether or not they are officially recognized by laws or other formal norms. It is commonly used to refer to what happens in practice, in contrast with ''de jure'' ("by la ...

standard for sound cards in PCs for many years. Creative Technology have made their own file format Creative Voice which has the file format .voc. In 1987 Creative Technology released the ''Creative Music System'' (C/MS), a 12-voice sound card for the IBM PC architecture. When C/MS struggled to acquire market share, Sim traveled from Singapore to

and negotiated a deal with RadioShack's Tandy division to market the product as the Game Blaster. While the Game Blaster did not overcome AdLib's sound card market dominance, Creative used the platform to create the first

, which retained CM/S hardware and added the

Yamaha YM3812 The OPL (FM Operator Type-L) series are a family of sound chips developed by Yamaha. The OPL series are low-cost sound chips providing FM synthesis for use in computing, music and video game applications. Internal operation The internal operation ...

chip found on the AdLib card, as well as adding a component for playing and recording digital samples. Creative aggressively marketed the "stereo" aspect of the Sound Blaster (only the C/MS chips were capable of stereo, not the complete product) to calling the sound producing micro-controller a "DSP", hoping to associate the product with a digital signal processor (the DSP could encode/decode ADPCM in real time, but otherwise had no other DSP-like qualities). Monaural Sound Blaster cards were introduced in 1989, and Sound Blaster Pro stereo cards followed in 1992. The 16-bit Sound Blaster AWE32 added Wavetable MIDI, and AWE64 offered 32 and 64 voices. Sound Blaster achieved competitive control of the PC audio market by 1992, the same year that its main competitor, Ad Lib, Inc., went bankrupt. In the mid-1990s, following the launch of the Sound Blaster 16 and related products, Creative Technologies' audio revenue grew from US$40 million to nearly US$1 billion annually. The sixth generation of Sound Blaster sound cards introduced SBX Pro Studio, a feature that restores the highs and lows of compressed audio files, enhancing detail and clarity. SBX Pro Studio also offers user settings for controlling bass and virtual surround.

Creative X-Fi Sonic Carrier

The Creative X-Fi Sonic Carrier, launched in January 2016, consists of a long main unit and a subwoofer that houses 17 drivers in an 11.2.4 speaker configuration. It incorporates

Dolby Atmos Dolby Atmos is a surround sound technology developed by Dolby Laboratories. It expands on existing surround sound systems by adding height channels, allowing sounds to be interpreted as three-dimensional objects with neither horizontal, nor verti ...

surround processing, and also features Creative's EAX 15.2 Dimensional Audio to extract, enhance and upscale sound from legacy material. The audio and video engine of the X-Fi Sonic Carrier are powered by 7 processors with a total of 14 cores. It supports both local and streaming video content at up to 4K 60 fps, as well as 15.2 channels of high resolution audio playback. It also comes with 3 distinct wireless technologies that allow multi-room Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and a zero-latency speaker-to-speaker link to up to 4 subwoofer units.

Other products

* Headphones * Gaming headsets * Portable Bluetooth speakers * Creative GigaWorks ProGamer G500 speakers

Discontinued products

* CD and

DVD 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 kind ...

players, drives, and controller cards * Graphics cards * Prodikeys, a

computer keyboard A computer keyboard is a peripheral input device modeled after the typewriter keyboard which uses an arrangement of buttons or keys to act as mechanical levers or electronic switches. Replacing early punched cards and paper tape technolog ...

musical keyboard A musical keyboard is the set of adjacent depressible levers or keys on a musical instrument. Keyboards typically contain keys for playing the twelve notes of the Western musical scale, with a combination of larger, longer keys and smaller, sh ...

combination * Optical mice and keyboards * Vado HD *

Creative Zen ZEN is a series of discontinued portable media players designed and manufactured by Creative Technology Limited. The players evolved from the NOMAD brand through the NOMAD Jukebox series of music players, with the first separate "ZEN" branded mo ...

and Creative MuVo portable media players

References

External links

* {{authority control 1981 establishments in Singapore Companies formerly listed on the Nasdaq Companies listed on the Singapore Exchange Computer companies established in 1981 Computer peripheral companies Design companies established in 1981 Electronics companies established in 1981 Headphones manufacturers Loudspeaker manufacturers Manufacturing companies established in 1981 Multinational companies headquartered in Singapore Portable audio player manufacturers Singaporean brands Singaporean companies established in 1981