RSSCreative Expects Loss of $60 Million
By the Betanews Staff | Published April 5, 2006, 11:21 AM
Creative disclosed Wednesday that it expected to report a loss for the quarter ending March 31, which it blamed on falling prices of flash memory. The Singapore-based electronics marker will post a loss of between $55 to 65 million on revenue of $220 to 230 million. The company said the loss figures did not include a non-cash impairment charge of $25 million and $9 million to refocus its graphics business during the quarter.
Creative has struggled to stay competitive with Apple in digital media, and that has taken a toll on the company's bottom line, say analysts. "The sharp drop in memory prices had a significant negative impact on sales in March and resulted in lower revenues and gross margins and inventory write-downs in the period," Creative said in a statement.
Creative sound products are without equal. The current market leading X-F1 line is the best sounding audio ever introduced to the PC. For some people here to not understand that just shows there ignorance of the products. The Audigy line was top notch also. It's true that there was only minor chances since the audigy 2 which really didnt justify a new product. But if you are a serious gamer or music buff, you need and should want a X-F1. Combined with quality speakers it makes your PC sound better then 90% of most home audio solutions. It doesn't beat my Carver system but nothing does. Creatives money problems are not a reflection of bad technology. They are for the most part way ahead of the industry. Problem is most people dont care about anything more then basic audio and thus intigrated motherboards are to popular. You can't make sales if there isn't much need for it.
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|While the X-F1 may be great, it's also way out of most folks league....even among gamers. Maybe if it comes dopwn in price about $300, but until then..
It's sad that they wait so long to produce something decent and then charge an arm and a leg for it.
The Live! series was a joke, the Audigy only a light improvement. If they can drop prices on this X-F1, they might actually be on to something, but I have yet to hear one in action, so I'll withold judgement on it.
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|meh. People's built-in sound is fine enough. I don't notice a difference. a few fps isn't worth $300 to me, gamer or not. If I wanted "excellent" sound I surely wouldn't be running it through an noisy minefield of the inside of a PC anyway.
Audiophiles: lol.
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|I have the X-F1 extrememusic which only cost me 120 bucks. well worth the money.
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|It sounds like Creative paid too much for flash memory.
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|AWE32 was the last product Creative released that I had any faith in at all. My opinion of any product or market they have since catered to can be derived from the previous statement.
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|And why's that?
You had bad expericences? I do agree that their most recent sound cards did not really have big improvements over the others (I mean for general consumers, maybe for other type of people...)
but I still think that, aside that, their sound cards are really good and their EAX technology is rather good too!
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|EAX is a development platform. It has nothing to do with quality, just real-time effects.
The DACs they use now are crap. There are a ton of sound cards out there that can easily outperform the Creative line...even using EAX now that it's basically been incorporated into DirectX.
I admit EAX one-upped Aureal, but if that's all they have to offer in the PC audio market, they have some catching up to do.
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|The X-Fi has better DACs than any other sound card on the market. Name one sound card that has a better on board audio processor.
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|While it is nice to look at, it's also $400 minimum.
Among Desktop Sound Cards, Creative is currently at the bottom of the heap.
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|64 bit web cam drivers from Creative would be nice. I like their products, but need 64 bit drivers.
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|Really? I bought my Sound Blaster X-Fi Extreme Music sound card for $199.99 directly from Creative Labs own website.
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