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Here is an article from Singapore business daily, The Business Times. Click here to view this article at the original site. We have mirrored it here because the site only keeps articles for a few short weeks. August 22, 2001 Creative's new SoundBlaster aims to tap upgrade marketEntire line slated for immediate shipment to global retail and online outletsBy CREATIVE Technology yesterday unveiled a new SoundBlaster platform with top sound quality to tap the upgrade market, in a bid to boost its Christmas sales amid falling consumer spending worldwide. Called Audigy - derived from 'audio' and 'prodigy' - the new audio processor can produce computer sound quality which matches that of professional audio and home entertainment systems, Creative's chairman and chief executive Sim Wong Hoo said yesterday. 'This represents the best audio you can achieve on a PC, way surpassing any audio solution,' he said, adding that it will attract existing soundcard users who wish to make their PCs a top-of-the-line digital entertainment platform.
More than 170 million people worldwide are Creative soundcard users. Aside from offering high definition audio clarity, the latest platform - which is Creative's eighth generation of soundcards in the past 12 years - also offers audio realism capabilities and is compatible with professional speaker systems and other audio gear. The Audigy Sound Blaster products range from US$99 to US$249, and the entire line has been slated for immediate shipment to global retail and online outlets. Following the launch of Audigy, Creative's earlier range of soundcards - the Sound Blaster 'Live' series which first came out in 1998 - will be moved down to cater to the mid-range and mainstream buyers. Creative earlier this month posted a full-year net loss of US$$130.4 million or US$1.65 a share, which was mainly due to net investment losses and write-downs totalling US$148.5 million and other charges of US$31 million in the year ended June. But while all the four quarters were profitable operationally, its earnings excluding one-off items in the third and fourth quarters had slowed considerably. The company has set itself an earnings per share target of 60 US cents for the current financial year, and an EPS target of four to five US cents in the first quarter ending September. It said earlier it aims to achieve these targets through a higher focus on its core audio business, where margins are higher, and less on its graphic and storage business segments. Mr Sim yesterday said he believes the PC audio market can still be expanded, and there are still opportunities for Creative to give customers better audio solutions. He would not comment on sales targets for Audigy, but said that margins from these would be way above the company's corporate average. He added that some areas the company may try to explore further include the speaker, portable audio, and musical instrument markets, as well as entering the Macintosh market.
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