Creative says it has sold more than two million MP3 players last quarter. “While the Christmas season is over, Creative believes that demand will still be strong, and plans to continue with its production momentum this quarter,” Connie Tan reports for Channel NewsAsia.

Tan reports, “Over at MacWorld, Apple Computer has launched a new iPod digital music player costing as little as US$99. Chief executive Steve Jobs said Apple had sold 4.5 million units of its blockbuster iPod in the last quarter, almost double that of its nearest competitor, Creative’s Zen Micro. But Creative’s CEO Sim Wong Hoo says Creative is not worried about the new flash player from Apple eating into its market share.”

Said Mr Sim, “Actually, to me it’s a big let-down: we’re expecting a good fight but they’re coming out with something that’s five generations older. It’s our first generation MuVo One product feature, without display, just have a (shuffle feature). We had that — that’s a four-year-old product.

“So I think the whole industry will just laugh at it, because the flash people — it’s worse than the cheapest Chinese player. Even the cheap, cheap Chinese brand today has display and has FM. They don’t have this kind of thing, and they expect to come out with a fight; I think it’s a non-starter to begin with.”

Full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: Whatever. One question: how many of the Creative players were considered “digital lumps of coal” and returned so that people could go get the Apple iPods they really wanted?