RSSCreative Sells 2 Million MP3 Players
By Ed Oswald | Published April 22, 2005, 10:58 AM
Creative late Thursday announced its quarterly results for the first three months of 2005, saying it had sold another 2 million music players, equaling its totals from the holiday quarter of last year.
While Creative is one of the few Windows-based players having success in a market dominated by the iPod, the company admitted that strategic pricing by Apple has cut into its profit margins.
"This was our second consecutive quarter of selling two million MP3 players, an achievement that further positions us as an industry leader in the explosive MP3 market," Sim Wong Hoo, Creative's CEO said in prepared remarks.
Hoo said that his company will continue to aggressively price its players, but warned that it would move profit margins lower in the short-term.
Craig McHugh, president of Creative conceded that the company is beginning to feel the financial pressure of Apple's strategies. McHugh said that the price drops in the iPod Mini were larger and the aggressive pricing of the iPod Shuffle was lower than expected. Due to this, Creative's gross margins came in lower than the company's guidance.
Creative expressed optimism that the higher sales of its players will help it to strike better deals with parts suppliers. This would help drive down the cost of manufacturing the players and curb the decrease in profits that the company saw during the past quarter.
Creative struck deals with Circuit City and Best Buy to carry the Zen Micro, the company's most popular player during the quarter, which substantially increased the availability of the product. Competitor Apple had been selling the iPod in Best Buy stores since 2002.
Earlier this month, Apple announced it had sold 5.3 million iPods during the first three months of 2005, an increase of about 700,000 units over the holiday quarter, and a 525 percent increase over the year-ago quarter.
Creative = Windows based? Since when? I thought that, just like the iPod, they were cross-platform.
I'm not sure that 2 million is too much to brag about, but I hope Creative starts doing better. SOMEONE needs to force Apple to lower their prices.
I bought a 40GB Zen Xtra last year, when I could have bought a 20Gb iPod for the same price... That was the decision maker for me.
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Creative is based on Windows Media, so the Zen is Windows based - even if both players can use MP3 as well.
As to lower prices, if you read the quotes above, Apple is the one actually pushing for cheap players. Creative had to drop its prices to compete with Apple, not the other way around!
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I bought a Zen Jukebox for $150 from a friend. I really dislike people who post ridiculous flames against software / hardware on this site -- but I have to say -- from my own personal experience and my own feelings on the Zen Jukebox -- the Zen sucks. :( -- I like the Interface -- it's simple enough ... the EAX effects / sound environments provide a neat little bonus feature (albeit being useless).
I bought the Nomad for concert bootlegging as older versions included a line-in recording option. They removed that from the Zen Jukebox -- my bad for poor research. I found the transfer from PC to Jukebox really slow and the software included to pale in comparison to iTunes.
This is my opinion -- I really feel that the iPod is simple, 'sexy', and a status symbol -- but something that is certainly not perfect and could certainly be innovated upon -- if not in the technology, but in the price (which is still rather steep for a novelty item in my opinion). I'd love to see Creative increase the pressure / competition on Apple.
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If you have an iPod and want to use MSN Music or any listed at www.playsforsure.com you will have to convert it possible burning to CD then ripping which I hear loses quality. With a Zen Micro with PlaysForSure I could use Creatives clunky player, or what I do, use Windows Media Player 10 to sync with the MTP protocol. I can the Zen Explorer to do some extra tasks like sync with Outlook or use as a HD which only takes a few megs. The Creative CD with normal install will take 100s of megs. With iPod you are pretty much stuck to iTunes and iTunes player. I got the Zen because the files stay .mp3 .wav or .wma on the device. iPod converts them to their format. So if iTunes does not support your old device due to outdated DRM (like my Sony MiniDisc does not understand wma DRM) I am out of luck.
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A status symbol of what? Or stupid enough that you pay for music you can't use on anything else without jumping thru hoops. Yeah great status symbol bud.
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But apple did it because creative is a major threat.
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Yeah I thought the same thing about the Jukeboxes they offered. They all were pretty much crap - clunky, slow, and had weird controls. But... Creative has come a REALLY long way since the jukebox. Check out their latest offerings - I think you'll be impressed.
I actually wish I had gotten the Zen Touch. The side control scrolling thingy (that's my technical term for it) on the Zen Xtra is a bit cumbersome. Oh well - it's still awesome because of all the other good points about it.
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Of course Creative had to compete with Apple. iPods were pretty much your ONLY choice until Creative released their alternative. To get people to try something new, you have to give them incentive (i.e. lower prices). Otherwise, they would have just died out a long time ago.
Now, Creative is becoming more popular and a lot more of a threat to Apple, so to counter-act that, Apple is lowering their prices. I still say it's great because Apple has enjoyed being the only 'flavor' for too long. It's nice to see them sweat a little :-)
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Once you get used to the side control scrolling thingy, it actually works rather nice. It's not to sensitive like the clockwheel on an iPod either.
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I still love my N-GAGE gaming phone with the MP3 player. It plays at a 44-bit audio radio. Near CD quality sound.
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lol. That's what I don't like about it. Yeah, I got used to it, but I wish it was a little more sensitive. It's just a quirky personal preference of mine.
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Lol @ near cd quality sound.
-iPod user.
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128K is minimum for me.
http://www.du168.net/big5/
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192kbps is the minimum for me.
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