“Shares of Creative Technology, whose products compete with Apple Computer’s iPod, fell to their lowest in almost two years on concern demand is slowing for its digital music players. The shares fell 3.6 percent, or 50 Singapore cents, to S$13.30 (HK$62.51) at the close in Singapore. The stock has fallen 45 percent this year, compared with the 4.2 percent rise in the benchmark Straits Times Index,” Andrea Tan reports for Bloomberg News. “In the three months ended March, Creative products stayed in the company’s warehouses for an average of 138 days before being shipped to customers, according to Bloomberg data, 1.4 times longer than a year earlier.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Excuse us for not commenting, we’re enjoying a Zen moment while listening to our iPods.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
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
Now that’s creative!
’nuff said I suppose….
There is no joy in this, except for the short sighted.
Looks like the war is almost over.
This is quite hilarious..
I fully expect similar ‘affection’ shown towards the Napster stock…
I believe when asked about Yahoo Unlimited, their reply was.. “Uh.. We don’t really know.. we never thought we’d have to deal with competitors.. we thought we could ride the iTunes backlash (aka Bill Gates petty cash line) to mediocre mediocre black ink”
Then again, to hear Thurrott put it, iTMS is already out of business because they aren’t subscription.
Can’t wait to read the same about…. MICROSOFT… or DELL
Roll on Apple.
Cli-Click
That was the sound of the Creative Death Knell Counter ticking up.
MU VOver iPod wannabes!
Can we say…..BELEAGUERED!
theloniousMac:
I agree. There’s no joy in any business failing. Even though they did declare “war.”
What I don’t understand is, the alleged renters of music must be buying their rent-compatible players from somewhere. The rent-compatible players would have to be of fairly recent manufacture.
Whose rent-compatibles are being bought? I was under the impression that Creative’s products were second only to Apple in quality/ease of use.
Mmmm.
No joy my a**!! When a competitor declares war on you and then immediately proceeds to fall flat on his face, joy is HIGHLY appropriate!
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Oh, Happy Day!
Creative products stayed in the company’s warehouses for an average of 138 days before being shipped to customers.
The stock has fallen 45 percent this year.
I know it is frustrating waiting for new Apple products to ship. But at least Apple is making money. It must be nice to be in a position where demand is greater than supply.
I would guess, among rent-compatible players, people are buying iRiver devices instead of Creative. iRiver seems to have a kind of cachet that Creative never managed.
That being said, not many people are buying anything besides the iPod. People are definitely not buying players because they are so excited about the subscription music services.
that’s just…bad
There went my life savings….
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What’s killing these guys is the Shuffle. According to the most recent numbers, Apple’s share of the hard-drive mp3 players hasn’t changed (90%), but Apple went from 0% of the flash drive player market to over 58% in just 2-3 months! I bet iRiver and most of the others are facing the same problems.
Go Apple!
Just as with the article yesterday, the lack of number on the actual sales make the concerns a little difficult to pin down.
The article does say that “Creative has been aggressive in ramping up supply”, which means Creative is below their EXPECTED demand, but I wish these articles contained numbers on actual units moved and percent change in growth.
what amazes me is the “compassion” that some people have for stupid companies. bottom line, they wanted to put Apple under, and we should be forgiving? come on, this is business and companies who can’t get by with their own, with customer service, ideas, sound business practice and creative products should be buried….
too many people have this “non competitive” attitude that comes from stupid ideas like “dumbing down” the schools, eliminating letter grades or not keeping score at sporting events. sorry folks, the real world is about competition and those who can’t compete, but would rather just “feel good”, won’t cut it in the business world.
as for Creative….. let em die a quick death, and let’s move on to the next inferior product that will attempt to dethrone the iPod!!
I eagerly await the day that Creative files bankruptcy… They were so arrogant “declaring war” that they doomed themselves to eventual failure.
That and I’ve never even seen one of their players in person outside of a store… when I see probably 50 different iPods per day at least.
–mAc
G5Mac,
I agree that we shouldn’t feel like we need to be compassionate towards a corporation that isn’t making good business decisions, but at the same time, we shouldn’t look down upon a company just because “they wanted to put Apple under” – that’s kind of the nature of competition.
It’s not that “too many people have this “non competitive” attitude.” It’s just the opposite. To see Creative fail means there is going to be less competition, and that’s the unfortunate part.
If not for competition from all these “stupid” companies, we probably never would have seen the iPod shuffle or the Mac mini. Fact is, we need these inferior companies. The better they do, the better it is for the consumer.
I find it funny how both creative and napster have taken a dive since declaring war on Apple.
All we need to hear is bill say those magical words…
I don’t feel quite the venom that some are expressing here, but Creative and others are simply the victims of their own product-led development and marketing.
Apple’s more market-led approach probably discovered that a couple of hundred dollars was considered too much for a relatively small capacity and that the display/remote control was probably responsible for a disproportionate element of the product cost in comparison to the customer’s perceived level of importance – hence the display-free Shuffle, which is being sold at a price barely above the cost of an equivalent USB thumbdrive.
Sim Wong Hoo’s folly was/is an arrogant response to the Shuffle’s launch and – although he could theoretically recover by introducing a ‘me too’ knock-off – the one thing he can never recover from is the fact that iPod/iTunes/iTMS is the only fully integrated end-to-end suite of music products in the marketplace.
Any one still dare to declare war on mighty apple publicly?
Sim Wong Hoo just became a Jeopardy Daily Double Answer.
Forget renting … Apple OWNS their ass!