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, borde ...
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 ...
, 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 Count ...
(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 products. It also partners with mainboard manufacturers and laptop brands to embed its
Sound Blaster technology on their products.
History
1981–1996
Creative Technology was founded in 1981 by childhood friends and
Ngee Ann Polytechnic 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
The Apple II (stylized as ) is an 8-bit home computer and one of the world's first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products. It was designed primarily by Steve Wozniak; Jerry Manock developed the design of Apple II's foam-mold ...
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'
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 Count ...
and convinced software developers to support the sound card, renamed Game Blaster and marketed by
RadioShack
RadioShack, formerly RadioShack Corporation, is an American retailer founded in 1921.
At its peak in 1999, RadioShack operated over 8,000 worldwide stores named RadioShack or Tandy Electronics in the United States, Mexico, United Kingdom, Austra ...
'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 au ...
, introduced at the 1989
COMDEX show just as the multimedia PC market, fueled by Intel's 386 CPU and Microsoft Windows 3.0, took off. The success of
Sound Blaster 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 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.
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 Interne ...
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
Isa or ISA may refer to:
Places
* Isa, Amur Oblast, Russia
* Isa, Kagoshima, Japan
* Isa, Nigeria
* Isa District, Kagoshima, former district in Japan
* Isa Town, middle class town located in Bahrain
* Mount Isa, Queensland, Australia
* Mount Is ...
PC audio market until 14 July 1997 when
Aureal Semiconductor 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 m ...
. 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
* ''Unfair'' (drama), Japanese television series
* '' Unfair: The Movie''
* Unfair (song), a song by South Korean boy group EXO