“Creative Technology, which makes portable MP3 players, reduced its sales outlook for the fourth quarter today. This news not only hit shares of Creative, but also dragged down shares of Apple somewhat. Companies that supply the chips for such digital music players, such as PortalPlayer and SigmaTel, also suffered, among others. It’s enough to make one wonder if some investors were ripe for distress about portable music players,” Alyce Lomax writes for The Motley Fool.
“Creative’s press announcement cited a softer-than-expected market during the period, but also mentioned lower selling prices — which makes me wonder if it has been difficult for Creative to woo customers given the popularity of the iPod, rather than if there’s any distress for Apple itself,” Lomax writes. “Although this is an incredibly competitive arena right now, ruminating over Apple’s outlook because of Creative’s warning seems misplaced at the moment. Creative also said that its margins will come in lower than expected. The bottom line is that Creative is competing in a market that is not only highly competitive, but so far, has been dominated by Apple.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Analysts shouldn’t be so concerned with “how much?” when it comes to Creative. “How long?” would seem to be a much more pressing (although it is related) question, even as “Sim Wong Who?” continues to rank highly as both the most juvenile and the most fun.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Creative Tech cuts sales outlook, drags Apple down in early trading – June 27, 2005
Apple passed 20 million iPods sold milestone in early June – June 24, 2005
Creative Technology shares slide to lowest mark in almost two years – May 18, 2005
Apple squeezes and Creative’s profit plunges 72-percent – April 23, 2005
Apple iPod pressure forces Creative to drop prices on music players – March 01, 2005
Creative’s self-declared ‘MP3 player war’ against Apple isn’t going very well – January 20, 2005
Creative CEO: Apple iPod shuffle ‘a big let-down, worse than the cheapest Chinese player’ – January 12, 2005
Creative declares ‘war’ on Apple iPod, shoots for 40% market share of MP3 players – December 21, 2004
Creative Technology declares ‘MP3 War’ against market-dominating Apple iPod – November 17, 2004
Mossberg: Dell, Rio, Creative ‘iPod mini killers’ lag badly behind Apple iPod mini – October 27, 2004
Creative pushes to become ‘Pepsi’ to Apple’s ‘Coke’ in digital music player market – August 07, 2004
Wow – a motley fool article that seems to make sense regarding apple stuff. Wow.
I wonder how much money they are making after all the advertising they are doing. Declaring war is expensive and it doesn’t seem like they are selling too many players. It seems like I remember they were selling on the order of 300,000 a quarter.
Apple stock is up and down like crazy – I just wish I was taking advantage of it.
The brokers seem to have a gut reaction nowadays with Aapl. Anything relate to the MP3 industry is reflected in the stock price. Maybe the Fool has got it right – becuase Apple dominate the market, brokers seem to think that what happens to other manufacturers etc will happen to Apple.
I agree with earlier estimates that 5.5 pods will be sold this quarter. Pretty sure that will be at least double sold compared to the same quarter last year. Of course the shuffles weren’t available then.
I’m more interested in the mac sales.
Make a lot of noise to attract money from foolish investors while you dis the market leader that’s spankin’ your ass. How creative?
Misplaced ruminating, indeed. Couldn’t be that Creative’s sales are tanking because it’s potential customers up and buy Apple products instead, I guess.
The anals’ and brokers are lemmings that know nothing about Apple’s prospects for growth. If they did, AAPL never would have been so under valued to be able to run up like crazy in the first place.
Think about it.
Ah, Rock on Steve!
A skittish lot, stock investors, aren’t they?
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”LOL” style=”border:0;” />
I think that you have to be the most distinguished story’ referring to this post or about write my custom paper accomplisher. And you must be employed by the essay writing service to accomplish such of cool already written essays.