“What’s black, white and green with iPod envy? The Zen Vision:M, a familiar-looking video player announced by Creative Technology. The similarly styled and priced device will compete directly with Apple Computer’s video iPod for a spot on every technophile’s holiday wish list. Creative plans to put the Vision:M up for sale this month, and with less than three weeks left in the shopping season, that makes the device a tough sell. ‘They’re extremely late,’ says Tim Bajarin, analyst with market research firm Creative Strategies, which is unaffiliated with Creative. ‘In this stage of the game, I’m skeptical this product will give them enough revenue to impact the bottom line for their next quarter… Though Creative is a worthy competitor, I think Vision:M will have zero impact on Apple,'” Rachel Rosmarin reports for Forbes.
Rosmarin reports, “Creative CEO Sim Wong Hoo denied that his company copied the device’s design from Apple, telling the BBC in London that Creative had been planning the new player’s design for more than a year. Apple’s video iPod has been on the market for only two months. Hoo has a history of making loud claims about competing with Apple in the MP3-player space. In August, Creative won a U.S. patent for an MP3-player interface involving the way multiple screens are used to navigate through songs. Hoo told the BBC that he plans to pursue this patent aggressively. In November 2004, he famously announced that his company’s products would outsell Apple’s with the help of an expensive marketing campaign. ‘He’s a colorful guy,’ says Bajarin about Hoo. ‘But since what he says sometimes doesn’t happen, it impacts our ability to see him as truly credible.'”
Full article here.
Sim Wong Hoo, Rob Glaser, and Steve Balmer ought to start up their own carnival freak show of tech CEOs. They could make grand pronouncements, dance and sweat, light up lightbulbs in their mouths, have a chair tossing for distance event, stage competitive eating contests, play frisbee golf with Sony’s recalled Rootkit CDs, fashion Apple product knockoffs right on stage, scream obscenities, rally the crowd for “interoperability,” start imaginary wars – there are so many possibilities! Tickets to the show would be the only product they could muster up between the three of them for which we’d pay a cent. They could videotape it and sell it on Apple’s iTunes Music Store. At least then they’d finally have a hit in the digital content marketplace.
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Apple faces prospect of bruising iPod patent dispute from Creative Technology – December 09, 2005
Creative Technology’s official press relase for Zen Vision:M Apple iPod knockoff – December 08, 2005
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martin, you dont need to use that language. lets remember that we are all human. people make mistakes, i’m sure most of these people will realise in time that the ipod doesnt stack up against the zvm.
Hah, you guys are pathetic, you fail to believe that there is any half as good or possibly better then an iPod. I’m a proud owner of a Creative Vision M, AND a iPod Video. I happened to win the Vision in a lottery. And there both good, iPod has better audio (slightly) but shitty video. The Creative defiently has better Video.
That’s the opinion from someone who has BOTH, and isn’t an Apple fanboy
I bought an iPod, tried to get used to it and decided I had better return it before my 30 days was up because there were just too many things about it that annoyed the crap out of me. So, I returned the iPod, did some research and wound up with the Creative ZVM. I am soooooooo glad that I did because it is a far superior product and costs far less $$$.
Apple has a crappy attitude these days which is SEVERELY limiting their creative ability. It’s a, “Oh you don’t want that feature, it’s not good for you — we know best”, kind of thing and I’m sick of it. Sony is getting to be the same way.
It cracks me up to read all the original posts to this article where the fanboys and girls got their kicks in without even considering that this product is way better… and that now they are quiet. /ha
Oh, and for all you you aholes crying about XYZ company copying Apple, you should know that Apple stole all it’s original stuff from Xerox because Xerox forgot to make them sign a non-disclosure agreement way back in the 70s when they showed them all their cool stuff (silly Xerox just didn’t have the vision of being anything but a copy company).
Bbbbbaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!
Hahaha Ipods are for teeny boppers, techno know nothings, and rich dumbasses that think it’s better because it costs 20 dollars more. Seriously do you think some people dont get ipods because of the cost? No it’s because the sound quality sucks and no itunes is for retards that can’t make their own content. Hmm and I wonder why macs run windows xp and intel cpus now.. Oh yeah it’s because apple doesn’t make real computers anymore and only mp3 players.