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

To: Scott Moore who wrote (11594)	6/11/1998 7:48:00 AM
From: Kulnor	Respond to of 13925

Creative Announces That Fourth Quarter Results Will Come In Below Expectations biz.yahoo.com

To: Scott Moore who wrote (11594)	6/11/1998 9:38:00 AM
From: Douglas Webb	Respond to of 13925

I'm as disappointed in Creaf's performance as an investment as any other long, but I had to point out some things that bother me in this post: You've got face it that Aureal has the better chip, and SBL is going to turn people off when they find out they have to have 4 speakers. Not so long ago, you could have said: "You've got to face it that every PC already has sound built in, and the SoundBlaster is going to turn people off when they find out they have to have external speakers." Sound cards were a premium product a while back, something which was rare to find on a computer. Now you practically have to pay extra to have the soundcard removed by the OEM if you don't want it. I think people will buy the extra speakers eventually, when they come to expect that kind of sound to come out of their computer. CREAF's Voodoo II is a success in a small niche and how can they figure that SBL will be anything more than a small niche product also? Again, 3D video started as a niche product, but now we have MMX in our chips and 3D cards out the wazoo. It's the nature of technology in this industry to evolve, and what seems like a niche today will be mainstream tomorrow, just like today's mainstream was a niche yesterday. IMO, if it weren't for the lack of DOS game support, the S3 sonic vibes would have taken a bigger chunk away from CREAF already in the lower end. At some point, DOS games will be a thing of the past and will CREAF's profit margin be sustainable when competing in the PCI market? I assume that by bringing up DOS game support, you're indirectly refering to Microsoft's DirectX drivers, which put a common API on all the devices games use. But, even if Microsoft comes up with a general driver that will support a 3D sound environment API on any soundcard doesn't mean that all soundcards will be equivalent. Look at the 3D video card market: all the cards support the DirectX video drivers, but some are much faster than others, support higher resolutions and more colors in different modes than others, and so on. The manufacturers can develop support either in 100% software or 100% hardware, or anywhere in between. That's differentiates the products in a common API environment. Doug.