Creative Technology

[holymage]

Creative Technologies featured on Bloomberg.

It was once the world’s second-largest maker of digital music players. Now, Creative Technology Ltd. thinks its audio technology will transform the “human listening experience” -- and investors are buying into it.

The Singapore-listed company’s Super X-Fi technology won the “Best of CES 2018 Award” at the electronics show in Las Vegas in January for its latest innovation. The product is used in headphones and dongles for smartphones and uses photos of people’s ear canals and acoustics assessments of the space they’re in to personalize their sound experience.

It’s been in the works for over 20 years and the company’s Chief Executive Officer Sim Wong Hoo has been touting the technology as “life-changing” and that it was the “holy grail” of headphone audio.

Investors seem to agree. Creative’s share price rallied more than 290 percent to a level not seen in about six years after winning the trophy. At S$4.35 ($3.29), that’s still far from its record high of S$64 attained in 2000, when it had a market cap of S$5.2 billion.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/...l-of-audio

[desmondxyz]

Creative Technologies featured on Bloomberg.

It was once the world’s second-largest maker of digital music players. Now, Creative Technology Ltd. thinks its audio technology will transform the “human listening experience” -- and investors are buying into it.

The Singapore-listed company’s Super X-Fi technology won the “Best of CES 2018 Award” at the electronics show in Las Vegas in January for its latest innovation. The product is used in headphones and dongles for smartphones and uses photos of people’s ear canals and acoustics assessments of the space they’re in to personalize their sound experience.

It’s been in the works for over 20 years and the company’s Chief Executive Officer Sim Wong Hoo has been touting the technology as “life-changing” and that it was the “holy grail” of headphone audio.

Investors seem to agree. Creative’s share price rallied more than 290 percent to a level not seen in about six years after winning the trophy. At S$4.35 ($3.29), that’s still far from its record high of S$64 attained in 2000, when it had a market cap of S$5.2 billion.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/...l-of-audio

Ppl try very hard to justify the sudden surge of creative share price....   

The only reason it goes up could be just becsuse there are ppl buying....That's it

[cyclone]

Court of Appeal allows Creative’s Appeal for additional damages and dismisses Huawei’s Appeal

The Singapore Court of Appeal (the "CA") heard both the appeals on 25 May 2018 and issued its oral decision on the same date.

The CA dismissed Huawei’s Appeal and granted Creative’s Appeal with regard of certain sums. In doing so, the CA ordered that Huawei pay the Company and QMax an additional sum of approximately S$2.3m (in addition to the amounts previously awarded by the High Court of US$9.3 million and S$15.6 million with interest). The CA also awarded costs to the Company and QMax. The CA’s judgment is final and non-appealable.

Following the CA’s judgment, Creative expects to recognise an income arising from the above-mentioned legal proceedings of approximately US$32 million (S$43 million) in the quarter ending 30 June 2018.

More details in http://infopub.sgx.com/FileOpen/Creative...eID=507397

[Wildreamz]

Creative's Super-Fi headphones and dongles are due to to be released next quarter (current quarter?): https://www.creative.com/corporate/inves...elease.pdf

For the current financial year, the Group expects no significant change in the market conditions and overall market for the Group’s products remain challenging. However, following the recent announcement of Super X-Fi (“SXFI”), a groundbreaking new headphone holography technology (more information on sxfi.com), sales of new SXFI products is expected to provide good revenue growth opportunities for the current financial year (FY2019). SXFI was announced in the third quarter of FY2018 and has received overwhelming reception. We expect to commence volume shipment of the new SXFI products from the next quarter (Q2 FY2019). For the current quarter, revenue is expected to be comparable to the current level and the Group expects to report an operating loss. 

From early reviews, I think it is the real deal: https://www.cnet.com/news/creatives-new-...d-blowing/

The product may be a silent hit, and the share price may follow.

At market cap of only S$414.25M Creative may be a very attractive acquisition target for cash rich tech giants (good case). Or intense competition (worst case). 

If I'm a punter, I would put some money in this name.

[hungting]

SuperX-Fi would be launched in 4 days' time.

https://sg.creative.com/

[Wildreamz]

As a fan of technology, and great audio in general, I'm excited 

[Big Toe]

This I can comment.

1. Creative makes ok devices. Creative is not known for quality sound. Ask any self respecting audiophile, the person will likely choke upon hearing it. Then again this product is probably targeting the masses and their portable devices.

2. It will not miraculously make the sound quality higher. That depends on the quality of recording, the bitrate (Hi res audio is 29 times that of compressed audio), the playback device and the output device(ie headphones). The SXFI is none of the above. It is a signal processor, Mr Sim knows this fact better than anyone else.

3. If I am reading it correctly, the recording industry have been using similar signal processing technology with variable parameters for decades but not in such a small package and usually costs a lot more.

4. But much like how the crowd has taken to more is better(surround sound, 7.1 speakers and soon 50.1 speakers), it may well turn out to be wildly popular. But as for me, it is meh...

5. if the masses takes to it, it can be very lucrative to incorporate it into portable devices and collect licensing fees for it. This is the genius behind it, not the technology or the sound. And respect to Sim Wong Hoo for always trying.

[Wildreamz]

The key is it's basically a cheaper (US$150), portable version of the Smyth Realizer A16 (US$3995).

Check out their reactions, very funny:


Full discussion by audiophiles here: https://www.head-fi.org/threads/creative...hy.869663/ (click the links)

In short, they are excited by the price. It's not about making the intrinsic audio quality better per se, but to enhance the immersiveness of your existing audio gear, by simulating a surround sound effect (through signal processing, as you said).

But how is this going to play out (how profitable it is, how many they going to sell), is a big wild card in my view. With the correct marketing and execution, this may be big (especially the IP).

[Wildreamz]

Remember the rumour that Apple is releasing their own branded noise-cancelling headphones? https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/06/...-for-2019/

Imagine how attractive this IP is to them. They can either buy/license the IP from Creative, if it really takes off, or come up with a similar technology of their own and completely crush Creative all over again, like they did almost 20 years ago.

Also imagine in Jony Ive's soothing voice "It's magical." at cheap price of only $599 per pair. 

[crabcrab]

Creative Tech ($6.22) - Creative says 600 units of Super x-fi amp sold in first 20 minutes

https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/compani...s-but-wont