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Friday 15th October 1999 was the big press launch for Creative's latest products - the venerable Sound Blaster Live! Platinum and the much awaited 3D Blaster GeForce. The launch was held at Creative Resource, Creative's HQ in Singapore.
The Creative Resource building. Nice place!
The day began with Creative Chairman and CEO, Mr Sim Wong Hoo. He spoke of a new direction for the company and there were demonstrations of the Sound Blaster Live! Platinum and the 3D Blaster GeForce!
I also managed to catch a glimpse of several new products like a new Webcam with a radical concept, and many other Internet related services that Creative will be gradually rolling out.
The Creative Resource building houses Creative's business, R&D and manufacturing facilities. There's even a CD manufacturing plant and a childcare center in there!
A Loss Of Identity?
The day began with Mr Sim's presentation on Creative in the Next Millennium - the challenges and opportunities.
With its roots in the PC hardware and peripheral business, Creative finds itself in a very low profit margin market. Virtually every product in the marketplace is falling in price very quickly, as new and more advanced solutions are introduced at breakneck pace. One example is the graphic card business, which goes through major changes in a matter of months.
Recently, Creative has launched sites like www.lavamusic.com and www.creativechat.com. They also changed Cambridge SoundWorks' www.hifi.com web site into an e-commerce site, selling all brands of HiFi products.
What is Creative up to? Mr Sim echoes the thoughts of many people out there who are confused as to what kind of company Creative is, especially with its recent forays into the web.
Creative cannot rely on being a sound card or hardware company any more. Instead, the new direction for Creative in the new millennium is to focus on the user experience by banking on the existing 40 million user base for Creative products - a huge number of people by any count.
Creative will focus on the user experience through the use of the Internet, and the packaging of value added software and services with the core products like the Sound Blaster.
Let's see how they'll do it...
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