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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!
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....

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!

Sim Wong WHO?

People work at/for these companies. It isn't wrong to feel compassion.

And on another level, having more than one viable company in any given market (i.e.: competition) is what drives a great company to make even better products. Lack of competition can make a once great company produce utter dreck (i.e.: Microsoft).

And yes. Microsoft once was a great company. They were able to write a full-featured version of Word (including print preview!) that fit on a single-sided floppy and ran in a 128K memory space along with the Mac system.

Say what you will, but that was damn fine coding. Unfortunately, the current version of Word is bloated beyond recognition. I will not allow it, or its Office brethren, on my computer.

Apple's competitors can bite me. I hope they all go under. Why? Because I'm a vicious Mac-zealot? No, because, even after all this time, none of Apple's competitors seem even the slightest bit interested in making their products work with the Mac. I'm pretty sure the competitor MP3 players can be made to work, but the services they support won't.

Let someone come out with another download service that works on a Mac. Then talk to me about "competition".

Some of us say we should feel compassion for these companies? why I mean all the years apple was supposed to go under and all the ridicule that comes with being a mac user? yea right. What about you guys work on toys and it's only does design work or other silly things of that nature. Or did u you forget what was said about the shuffle when it came out by Creative's president or whom ever it was?? It's hard to feel compassion for a company who was wishing for you own doom. I mean it's like me, getting in a fight with someone trying to beat the crap out of me cuz I'm so damn handsome, but loses. Do you think I'm going to care if he has to go to work the next day with a black eye? not really, lol. I argee that competition is good when the company @ least respects it's opponents instead of putting it down before it puts up half a decnt fight.