RSSCreative Ships 25 Millionth MP3 Player
By Ed Oswald | Published November 14, 2007, 3:51 PM
Beleaguered electronics company Creative took a moment to toot its own horn on Wednesday, saying it had recently shipped its 25 millionth player.
Even though Creative was in the digital music market two years before the first iPod even shipped, it took the company eight years to get to this level, whereas Apple passed the same milestone in 2006, in only five years.
However, since then iPod sales have ramped up significantly, with the device selling over 110 million units as of September of this year. It is such a significant explosion in sales that other manufacturers, Creative included, are having a difficult time gaining any traction.
Regardless, this number is enough to make the Korean company the second biggest manufacturer of MP3 players behind Apple, according to studies by research firm IDC.
The first player from Creative was the original Nomad, a flash-based player that shipped in 1999. This was followed by the Nomad Jukebox, its first hard-drive based player that shipped the following year.
"Shipment of 25 million MP3 players marks a major milestone in Creative history, as our player unit volume exceeds the combined unit sales from some of the biggest names in consumer electronics," chairman and CEO Sim Wong Hoo said.
Sim over the years had been one of the digital media device industry's most visible players, known for his sometimes over-the-top comments regarding his not only his products, but Apple and the industry at large. He was one of the bigger proponents internally for expanding into the portable media business.
However, as Creative struggled in the face of Apple, Sim seemed to take an increasingly less public role. It seemed to all end with Apple and Creative settling their differences in August 2006, and the Singaporean company joining the "Made for iPod" program.
I used to like creative devices, until I got my 5.5g iPod. Happy now, sorry creative.
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Say what you will about Creative, but they make really good MP3 players. I've had players from iRiver, Sony, Apple and SanDisk, but I've been happiest with my year-old Creative player by far. I'm getting pretty tired of these articles that make the iPod sound like the holy grail of music players that no other company can dream to reach. As far as I'm concerned, the iPod is a trendy, featureless, shiny piece of turd that came out of Steve Jobs' bunghole. There are so many MP3 players out there which are far, far superior to the iPod. It's just that most of these other companies don't spend hundreds of millions of dollars on TV ads every year to beat into your head that you have to have their product. Nothing causes 16 year old girls to exclaim with glee "oh my gawd I got to have one!" than shadows jumping around to top 40 songs in a TV commercial.
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People like us that visit a site like this completely miss the point when it comes to things like this. For 95% of the people out there looking for a portable media player, things like FLAC support and an equalizer don't matter at all. As long as it plays mp3s and videos people are fine so the iPod is more than enough for them, plus it looks nice and is competitively priced. That's all they need to know as far as they're concerned.
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Ahh! Creative... iPod and Zune has nothing on this....
Except they have to roll out some new MP3/Video/Wi-Fi players! soon!
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Creative is NOT a Korean company. Creative is from Singapore.
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..which has got to be better than China, right?
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No, you dumb fudge... Koreans makes the worst products. China products are not bad; their toys are just filled with lead. Most products comes from China.
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Mmm... Fudge...
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You'll have to speak up, I'm wearing a towel.
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Probably they just made a typing mistake...
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