Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Creative MP3 Player Share Falls 24% Over Last Year
Posted by Jason Dunn in "NEWS" @ 04:46 PM
"Creative Technology, the Singapore-based company that's a distant third behind Apple (AAPL) in the MP3 player market, full further behind last quarter. The company, which delisted from the Nasdaq earlier this year, posted Q1 sales of $185 million. That's down 24% y/y, while Apple saw iPod revenues increase 4%, and unit sales increase 17% in its last quarter. About the best you can for Creative is that it still has a larger market share (something in the single digits, according to NPD data) than Microsoft's Zune."
That's some bad news for Creative - they've obviously struggling, being pounded by Apple on one side and Microsoft and Sandisk on the other. It's too bad, because I really do like Creative's products - my Zen Vision:M is still a great player in many ways. I think one problem Creative has always had is that they simply have too many products in their lineup - it's not easy to digest or understand which one you want to buy. Differentiation is of course also the big problem - people need to look at their products and understand why it's better than other players.
Take the Zen Stone for instance: I bought one for use in an infrared sauna we bought this year, and not only was it a hassle that it didn't come with a built-in clip (come on, it's a no-brainer to copy Apple's Shuffle) it also couldn't take the heat in the sauna - yet the old Dell Ditty could. So now the Zen Stone sits here doing nothing.
If Creative released a version of the Zen with a four inch screen and 16 GB of memory, I'd be all over it in a heartbeat - I'm still questing for the perfect portable media player. I'll give Creative the nod for having a small 16 GB Flash player though - that's something that neither Apple nor Microsoft released, so good job Creative!
That's some bad news for Creative - they've obviously struggling, being pounded by Apple on one side and Microsoft and Sandisk on the other. It's too bad, because I really do like Creative's products - my Zen Vision:M is still a great player in many ways. I think one problem Creative has always had is that they simply have too many products in their lineup - it's not easy to digest or understand which one you want to buy. Differentiation is of course also the big problem - people need to look at their products and understand why it's better than other players.
Take the Zen Stone for instance: I bought one for use in an infrared sauna we bought this year, and not only was it a hassle that it didn't come with a built-in clip (come on, it's a no-brainer to copy Apple's Shuffle) it also couldn't take the heat in the sauna - yet the old Dell Ditty could. So now the Zen Stone sits here doing nothing.
If Creative released a version of the Zen with a four inch screen and 16 GB of memory, I'd be all over it in a heartbeat - I'm still questing for the perfect portable media player. I'll give Creative the nod for having a small 16 GB Flash player though - that's something that neither Apple nor Microsoft released, so good job Creative!
