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Technology Stocks : Creative Labs (CREAF) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Gambit who wrote (10653)	3/30/1998 2:41:00 AM
From: Derrick Lim Kok Fang	Respond to of 13925

Found this at a Singapore business paper: biztimes.asia1.com HOMEGROWN multinational Creative Technology is well poised to benefit from the convergence of the personal computer and consumer home entertainment market and believes it can leverage this phenomenon to power its growth well into the next millennium. "Right now we have a very strong audio strategy, but it is not just that we are looking at...we are going for convergence in your living room, and want to grab hold of the opportunity open in this space while many people (in the PC and consumer industries) still don't know how to play, because we know how to provide a complete solution," said Sim Wong Hoo, founder, chairman and chief executive of the Nadaq-listed group. Mr Sim, who won the Singapore Businessman of the Year award for an unprecedented second time on Friday, was speaking to BusinessIT in Hannover, Germany, after introducing what the company calls environmental audio" to the European press at the recent IT mega-fair, CeBIT '98. Creative believes environmental audio will be the next breakthrough in sound, claiming that the technology offers three-dimensional sound reproduction that is virtually indistinguishable from a live audio experience. "In a very short span of time, you will see everything in environmental audio, it is a whole new generation (of sound). At Comdex, people were very excited. They didn't believe that they could get (this quality) at Sound Blaster type of prices...but this is very important, we want to go for the mass market." Next quarter, Creative will ship its "seventh generation" audio card -- the PCI-based Sound Blaster Live!, to be priced in the tradition of Sound Blasters "at about US$200 or so", followed by speaker products which tie in seamlessly for the best experience. Mr Sim says there will be a range of products for different ends of the market. "We want to provide the best experience under a whole family products, so environmental audio will be an umbrella to cover the whole thing, to move beyond a sound card company," Mr Sim said. "You'll be looking at chips, sound cards, speakers, connectivities that solve messy wire problems in an elegant way. Prices will be kept low. "We will be looking at selling the whole package -- DVD, graphics, speakers, Sound Blaster live -- for below US$2,000 (S$3,200), and to push it to the living room, which could be in the near future." He said Creative, now having regained a position of strength, could pay greater attention to the lower end of the market it earlier sacrificed for profitability. "We are going after the big boys in the top-tier OEM market, and also the notebook market," he added. "People still think we are a sound card company, but we have moved beyond that. A year ago, we had one hot product -- AWE 64 (its flagship sound card) -- which turned around the company. But now, we have four or five more," he said. One such product is the PC-DVD player which, he said, was poised to take off in a big way this year. "We are expecting a very good DVD Christmas." The new-technology digital versatile disc (DVD) is expected to replace CD-ROM technology in the near future. Another is its speaker line from its Cambridge Soundworks acquisition, which has paid off well. From almost nothing, Creative now has grabbed 12 per cent of the US speaker market in just five months. "This is a big jump from what we have and we can push even further. Speakers can even be bigger than sound cards, it can be a standalone business in itself," he added.

To: Gambit who wrote (10653)	3/30/1998 11:13:00 AM
From: Brad Patton	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13925

Gambit, While agree there are some interesting points to the Power VR chip it does not enjoy the widespread support of Voodoo (somewhere around 80% right now). As a gamer and a Voodoo2 owner I can tell you performance, appearance and compatibility are all very important. From Tom's site: PowerVR's PCX1 and PCX2 chips are quite powerful 3D chips, but the cards that use them are highly incompatible. I've seen only very few games that run on this chip properly. If the PCX engine is used directly, the games look awesome though. you can expect 3Dfx's 'Glide' engine staying supported by many games for a long time.