Urgency Of New Product Development At Creative Technology

Introduction

Creative technology is a leading company that has focused on developing Audio related products primarily for the customer market. Creative gained world fame when it captured the world’s PC Sound Card market over a decade ago with its Sound Blaster sound card and was the market leader for many years in this specific segment.

In the late 1990s, when personal audio products evolved from CD-ROM WalkMan type products to the MP3 format media players, Creative technology entered the fray with several innovative audio products such as the Creative Zen and more recently Creative Stone products. These were squarely targeted at the iconic Apple iPod, iPod Nano, iPod Video and iPod Shuffle products that collectively have gained cult status and garnered major market share for Apple Computers.

In January 2007, Apple Computers renamed itself Apple Inc, symbolizing it is not merely in Computer products, but also in life-style digital electronics entertainment and educational products. Soon after it introduced iPhone and this announcement took the market by storm and made all Apple’s competitors, especially Creative technology look like they were lagging far behind.

Hence, this project will focus on the need for Creative technology to examine its new product development, which is super all-in one phone due to the market forces and demand. Besides, we also will discuss the different phases and the problems that may encounter during each phases, and the recommendation to resolve the problems.

Background

Creative is the worldwide leader in digital entertainment product for personal computer and the internet1. It was founded in Singapore in 1981 with the vision that multimedia would revolutionize the way people interact with their PCs and the mission that to expand their leadership role in the lifestyle Personal Digital Entertainment (PDE) market by using innovative technology, broadband and leading-edge designs for everyone who enjoys entertainment1.

Creative has expended its product range of innovative PDE that comprise MP3 Players, portable media players, multimedia speakers, digital and web cameras, musical keyboard, notebook products and software.

In the 2006 holiday quarter, Creative sold 2.5 million MP3 players during the period (for comparison purposes, Apple shipped about 21.066 million iPod devices onto the market during the same period). In the first half of 2006, Creative commanded about 3.7% of the digital media players market.

High-end audio card, once the mainstay product for which Creative Labs became known for