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Creative Gunning For the iPod
yashchopra writes "CTZ is running an article where Creative's main goal in 2005 is to take away market shares from Apple's iPod music player, which they believe is very possible. The publication also have some information on the upcoming flash MP3 player standards that we will see this year. "While many companies are looking forward to their flash MP3 players, Creative has other plans. Creative was one of the most popular exhibitors on the show floor with their Zen Micro and Zen Touch players on display. Creative's sole goal this year is to take away some market shares from Apple's iPod. The company believes it to be a possible task, as iPod is limited to iTunes when it comes to purchasing music online and with Creative's products, you will be able to purchase music from major online vendors. The ability to download and listen music from any major online retailer and the price are what Creative is using as their marketing strategies to compete against Apple's iPod. But other than that, Creative's products look very much like the iPod with a few changes."
The ability to download and listen music from any major online retailer
Well, all of them except for *the* major online retailer that is.
I wish them luck. Competition is good.
Whenever anybody says their product is really similar to iPod or Tivo except for a few tiny differences, I can guarantee you what the differences are.
Usability, physical beauty, and simplicity.
News flash: those little things are the reason people are buying a an iPod, buying a Tivo, etc, and not your product, Creative. My girlfriend didn't want to carry around something that looked like an angry PDA, so I got her an iPod and she's happy, and her friends are buying them now. My parents didn't want a home media center computer in their living room because they can barely handle their current computer, so I got them a Tivo and they're happy, and their friends are buying them now.
Are there cheaper products out that do the same dang thing? Sure. But they're not as usable, not as attractive, and not as simple. And sorry, Creative, but putting a "Mesmerizing Blue LED Back Light" isn't going to cut it. Those were "Mesmerizing" back in 2002. You're not going to get money out of my pocket by looking like a rice-boy's Civic dashboard.
And as long as the Zen Micro has a blatant pair of nipples on the touchpad, my girlfriend's not going to use it either.
What's your damage, Heather?
Given that Apple has about 70% of the market for online music sales, aren't the others all "minor" if numerous?
I can see this being the year of partnerships. Wireless transfers will be a huge part of that. All Creative need to do is add Bluetooth to their devices and sell them at Taco Bell. At this point, people could get the Backdoor Boy's latest hit with the purchase of a burrito.
I also see a large market for pre-recorded radio. Your car downloads the media at night while it sits in your garage. You listen the next day and hit the big red 'buy' button in order to purchase the music that you like.
More
iTunes GAINING market share every quarter
At best they can hope to slow the dominance!
The biggest most MAJOR retailer of songs is apple with over 70% of the market for sold files.
I hardly see how they can claim that they support "ANY major vendor" without supporting the DRM protected MPEG 2 AAC file format.
besides, apples the AUDIO in apple DRM is the most leightweight, and highest quality (48 frequency "bins' instead of 32, more amplitude, more upper frequ3encies) than mp3 and wma.
Digital Restriction Management sucks, but at least apple's is a little less hostile than microsoft's and Real's. (number of machines, phone-homes, number of allowed lost replacements, etc)
I'm not sure what non-iTunes stores outside the UK are like (because they won't let me find out), but the ones I've seen in the UK are all rebranded versions of the same backend. Which was awkward to use, glitchy, and more expensive. Their only advantage was they had some tracks iTunes didn't. I'd provide links, but I can only get into the pages using IE for Windows.
"Will work with anything except the iTunes store" isn't that great a selling point, IMHO...
Creative models seem to have better battery life, either easily replacable with a spare without needing special tools (Zen Xtra) or extra long battery life (Zen Touch).
The iPod always seems to rely heavily on iTunes, not just the store, but the software itself. For example multiple playlist creation and on fly editing (you can see whay songs are coming up and remove them if you want to) can be done directly on the Zen, I believe the iPod will need synching with iTunes to do the same.
There is far more freedom to copy songs to and from the Zen, to multiple machines, something that is difficult if not impossible to do on the iPod.
Noone can deny iPod's market share but the design seemed to stick in 2002/3, the Zen has overtaken Apple with more features, and they easily beat them in price.
It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity. --Albert Einstein
When they realize WHY the iPod is so succesful, then they will finally reach the starting line of competing for market share. I'm all for competition; if someone makes a better product that I'm willing to buy, power to them. But so far it seems like the executives and marketters at Creative should be required to use an iPod for a couple weeks first, in order to see what it's all about and what they're up against.
;-), but until the drones figure it out, it's a lost battle and SJ will be laughing all the way to the bank.
Large choices of online music vendors is NOT a feature that the majority of the public is looking for. Sure, if you have multiple choices it will be a nice added feature, but it's not the killer point. It's not even a MAJOR point. Hell, I don't even use the iTMS and I STILL love my iPod.
Unless they can work miracles, allowing for multiple online vendors is gonna mean more complicated work for the user, and more than likely a lot of confused users calling Creative, or the online music store's support line for help.
The reason that the iPod has sold so well to the non-Apple-lover masses is actually quite simple.
1) The device is simple.
No manuals. NO NEED! Scroll. Click. Play!
Connect. Sync. Done!
2) It's tiny, but the UI is what counts.
It's tiny and good looking, but that alone is not the main point, just an added bonus. The UI (and when I say UI I loosely mean it to include the screen and click wheel too) is not only easy to use, but seems to fit perfectly with the anatomy of the hand. This is not so much a selling point for first time purchasers, but it's a BIG point for returning customers. (Like myself, who purchased an 4G iPod last week now that my 1G iPod is wearing down a bit.)
3) Even geeks like simplicity.
Am I repeating myself? Oh lord, I am! But seriously, simplicity is the key. Learning how to do the ogg thing is fun and all, and hacking together your own music synchronizer software is an added excercise that certainly is fun, but when it comes to simply having music on the go, even geeks appreciate plug-n-go kind of simplicity.
So, the last 3 points all boil down to simplicity and "just works", and Creative needs to figure this out. It's not just the pretty design, or the flashy Apple brand name, or even the music store.
I'm not a graphics designer, an industrial designer, or a UI designer, but as a user I know dead on that Creative doesn't "get" it. Probably their engineers "get" it (they probably use iPods themselves!
C'mon, I want to see a product that makes me want to trash my iPod and buy the new thing!
Guy Kawasaki once wrote (as an "Evangelist") something along the lines of "I want something SO GOOD that it'll make me want to trash my Mac and never look back." That was constructive criticism aimed at Apple at the time, and perhaps they've finally come close to that with the new MacOS X (and awesome hardware), but so far it's just that. Apple competing with itself, constantly. Mac's are/were a niche market, but they do damn good in their market. iPods are no longer the niche market, but holy cow, main stream marketshare dominators!
Many companies, Creative included, seem to treat the music-syncing software as a necessary evil, rather than an important part of their product.
Look at Sony's awful NetMD software or Creative's poorly thought out, slow and unstable music organizer for their Muvo line. It's not all that difficult a problem to solve, but Apple seems to be the only one that puts any engineering effort into it.
But back on point, Apple needs to stop these lock-in practices, they tried to do it in the early days of the desktop computer, and now they are again trying to do it now. And like the late 80's and early 90's Apple started out real strong, because they had an amazing product, but soon people realized that there is nothing out there for them when choosing Apple. I beleive you will see that in the next couple years with iPod.
If I have to decide between listening to you, and listening to the company that owns three quarters of the online music market and three quarters of the portable music player market, I think I'll listen to the company.
Your history is kind of wacky. Apple's heydey in the computer market was the early 80s with the Apple II line. The Apple II was always a very open platform. The Mac, on the other hand, never owned a huge part of the market. The late 80s and early 90s were decent for Apple, but they never had anything like the kind of position that the iPod has. They never started out strong with a closed platform and got stomped, so I don't see how the iPod would mirror anything else they've done.
Maybe you're right and people want "open" hardware. Two things come to mind, though. The first is, how are any of the competitors any more "open" than the iPod? They all let you play raw MP3s that you can get from anywhere. The iPod lets you buy from iTMS and nowhere else that has DRM, the others let you buy from other places but not iTMS. Is being locked in to a handful of minor players less grievous than being locked in to a single major player? They all have DRM, they all restrict what you can do, and none of them will work with an arbitrary music player.
The second thing that comes to mind is this: 400,000 people a week would seem to disagree with your assertion. Maybe you're right and they'll change their minds, but so far I don't see any evidence.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Why do you think they made the iPod Shuffle ?
It's cheap enough to please most joggers.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
i think creative is in for a big fucking dose of reality. the ipod did not get where it was due to price, and no other product will touch it USING price. the ipod succeeded because it became an icon, and it is perpetuated now due to that. you're not going to compete against something like this by just offering a cheaper alternative. the only way to win this game now is to offer something cooler, or to offer something with bigger mindshare.
when i saw steve job's view of the "ipod marketshare" in the MWSF keynote from "before ipod mini" and "after ipod mini" one thing came to mind: everyone in the flash market better get ready to pack up their bags and leave, because apple's taking over in a big way. i don't think anyone else stands a chance anymore because no one can compete with apple's marketing by mindshare or cool-factor.
- tristan
Since 99% of all the music in people's mp3 collections is either ripped from CD or downloaded off the net, who cares which store it's connected to? Online music stores are nifty and all, but I seriously doubt that they are driving hardware sales.
READY.
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While i agree that Apple's key strength is simplicity and ease of use, i've never understood their need to have proprietary implementations in everything they do. I fear the same for the iPod/iTune in years to come. I can understand the logic if they target niche markets, as is the case with their computer division. However, in the portable music business, they have a near monopoly.
IMHO, this is the perfect opportunity for Apple to further strengthen their brand name and market clout by making iTunes an open standard and encourage others to adopt it as well. This is the only way they can maintain their lead in the long run. While they don't need to do things the Wal-Mart way, they don't need to do it the old IBM way either.
Please also take this constructively. I'm a big fan of Apple, and only mean well.
Apple is not a computer company, it's a fashion company.
Oh come on, while Apple has inevitably tapped into the fashion side of things (a first for the computer industry, really), you can't seriously say they're a Fashion Company!
Some people think Apple is a hardware company, others think it's a software company, but I think in reality people think this way because they can't wrap their minds around the possibility that a company could be BOTH at the same time, and synergetically support each other. They can sell cheaper hardware because they own the OS and can sell it dirt cheap without worrying about anti-monopoly issues related to dumping the OS wholesale to certain manufacturers and not others. (Reality checks show that the majority of people buy a computer with pre-installed OS, so none of this "I can build cheaper" nonsense when we speak of economics and marketing, please.) Think about it. The Mac mini comes with MacOS X, iLife '05 and a few others. And how much does it cost again?
At the same time, having tight control over the hardware means they can make a very tightly integrated OS and software that "just works", since they don't need to be concerned with half a million kinds of chip sets and configurations that may or may not work properly, and may or may not be fully compliant with the PCxxxxx standard of the day. I think this is sort of obvious now that Apple has pretty much given the bird to Adobe, Microsoft, Avid and many others by choosing direct competition where they traditionally preferred to supplement each other. Eventually, this may lead to the downfall of Apple, or create the next mega-monopoly (unlikely), but until then it appears they're doing very well. Ever read the profit reports on APPL?
Apple is positioning itself to take advantage of the (shockingly lousy) flash-based Music Player marketplace. Apple's move gives opportunity to Creative.
There are two groups of music player vendors: Apple, and Everyone Else. Although Creative designs some very good products, they are part of that Everyone Else group. Creative has the very difficult task of differentiating their products from the hundreds of other competitors to John Q. Public.
The iPod Shuffle will certainly clear out weaker competitors by competing directly against all of the products in the "Everyone Else" group. This effect on the Flash marketplace will hold even if Apple doesn't top the flash-based market.
With the resulting shake-up of the overall MP marketplace, Creative will have a great opportunity (and perhaps their only opportunity) to build brand recognition. Creative will have to compete directly against Apple, instead of competeing mostly against the no-names like M-link and SuperMP.
To take on Apple, Creative will need to beat Apple in all areas at once: smaller packages, lower cost, more features, significantly more capacity, top-notch customer support, excellent software, and excellent ease-of-use.
Dropping the ball in any one of these areas dooms Creative to a sublimating marketshare.
Creative can do it - they make very good products - but they'll have to jump in with both feet and take some serious risks before someone else makes it into the pool.
---
Now back to my regular market analysis job.
I got a Creative Nomad Xtra for Christmas, and I have been very satisifed with it thus far. I needed to upgrade the firmware to get the most out of my player, but so far I've shown it to my friends and they are most jealous as I paid the better part of $100 less for a 40 gig mp3 player then they paid for their Ipods.
;-)
I suspect you're the guy that brags how his '95 Civic was cheaper by magnitudes, just as comfortable, and got much better milleage than that flashy lil' Mercedes Benz SLK350. Oh, and is really fast too after adding that "Type R" sticker.
Sarcasm aside, good for you if you enjoy the product you bought. Satisfaction over your hard earned money is always better than disatisfaction. But market share seems to show that you're not the majority.
Seriously - the iPod is an OK device, but it is not *that* much better than your average MP3 player. Not better enought o justify the sales. The iPods aren't flying off the shelves because they are pretty or because they are easy to use. There are thousands of products that meet this criteria that fail every year.
/.ers gave more credit to marketing. Sure, you may hate them, but in the majority of cases (there are exceptions - Google, eBay), it is marketing, and marketing alone that makes a product succeed or fail.
They are flying off the shelves because of the nifty commercials with shadows dancing to Jet. They are flying off the shelves because U2 says to buy one. They are flying off the shelves because ther are in every second music video on MTV. They are flying off the shelves because they are featured in many major motion pictures. They are lfying off the shelves because teeny bop star X had one at the AMAs.
As usual - Apple's marketing as ruled the day. Unless creative can duplicate this marketing magic (I doubt it), they will fail.
I wish
You know what's enough to keep me away from any Creative MP3 player? The fact that they come with a whole 90 days of warranty on them. And that I know two different people in the past year who bought 30GB Zens and had the hard drive in them die within 6 months only to have Creative tell them they were out of luck.
This compared to a full year of AppleCare with less a week's turnaround time if I have problems? I'll pay extra for the piece of mind, thank you. Nevermind that Apple, while not perfect, is a company I'd far prefer to support than Creative.
If that's left you scratching your head, do some research on Creative's driver support for their hardware, the demise of Aureal (and what happened to Aureal's technology afterward), and the patent blackmailing of iD re: Doom 3 and EAX support. The less money I give Creative, the better I feel.
I'm reading this thread and, as with any other "iPod Killer" threads, I'm amazed at the zealotry that iPod fans exhibit.
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The main draw of the iPod seems to be its "style".
So...I propose to the iPod challengers that they team up with fashion designers to make designer audio players.
How silly will you look with your geeky iPod when I'm strutting around with my "Hugo Boss" or "Tommy Hilfiger" logo emblazened portable audio device. Your girlfriend is going to be pretty jelous when she compares her bland iPod with my girlfriend's "Cartier" or "Prada" designed audio device.
A previous article that supports my idea: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/23/17262
There is gobs of room in the portable MP3 player market that iPod isn't exploiting. Targeting iPod's market share simply means you'll be going after a limited market and needlessly competing for it. Meanwhile, there are people who still yearn for an easy to use music player with quality sound, long battery life, and that can play multiple formats. I've seen very few portable players that can do this at a reasonable price.
While I agree that competition in the portable mp3 player market is a good thing, I think Creative's a non-starter.
They win on price, I'll give you that. If you run down the features list of a Nomad vs. an iPod, the Nomad looks good, has a slightly bigger disk, and is $100 cheaper. Sure, it might be the size of a paperback instead of the size of a pack of cigarettes, but good design isn't necessarily worth $100 to most people. As long as you can plug the thing into your computer and get down to the business of cataloging and playing back music, then it should be fine.
Here's Creative's first Achilles heel. Where iTunes is simple and intuitive, Creative's software is terrible. I say this to you as a fellow user of open source software, where function often takes precedence over form: Their software SUCKS. It is hands-down the one of the worst applications that I have ever used. Where iTunes gets out of the way, Creative's application stands in front of you like a bouncer, arms crossed, giving you that look that says you're not cool enough to come in here. Moving songs and files to and from your Nomad is an unbelievably tedious chore. Eventually, frustrated and tired, I tried to use Windows Media Player to transfer music to my device. That's how bad. Add to that the constant upsell involved in using a new Nomad. Many Nomads come with a lot of encrypted music already on disk, just waiting for you to enter your credit card number and unlock it. Removing these songs to get your disk space back is frustrating, and being asked to shell out more money after you've just spent hundreds is insulting.
Fortunately, (pimping time) Red Chair Software has come to the rescue in this regard. With their NotMad software, using the Nomad stops sucking. Further, they license per-player, not per-copy, so you can synch multiple PCs against your player on the same license, something Apple can't do.
This is how incredibly bad Creative's Nomad software is: There's a company doing brisk business selling aftermarket replacements for it. You don't see anyone even trying to do the same for iTunes.
Fortunately, NotMad is pretty cheap at $30. So now with your Nomad, you're only saving $70 over the iPod.
Still, that's $70 put to other uses, until the Nomad breaks (and it will). Anecdotal research, while certainly not definitive, seems to show a very high failure rate for Nomads. Certainly my room-mate's broke inside of a year (the headphone jack has become de-soldered from the board). Learn from his mistake, and make sure you buy the extended warranty. That's another $30, bringing your total cost savings down to $40.
So now your total savings for a Nomad are about $40 over a comparable iPod. For $40, you may as well just get the market leader. Until Creative can improve the reliability of their products, and write a good software package to go with their hardware, they're going to keep losing.
Frankly, that's fine by me.
Even Jesus hates listening to Creed.
I don't think you get it. Imagine apple wins, say, 97% of the player market. And you can only shop at iTunes, what will that do for prices? And service?
It is in the best interest of iPod users that people buy product by other manufacturers!
I agree with the CD thing, though. I am not going to buy an 128K DRMed album when I can get the same one for the same price on CD and do whatever I wish with it.
Since iTunes came out, I've started buying a lot more CDs. The ability to have the same music in multiple places adds value to the CD. Pretty much everything I have I've ripped myself. In general, I don't bother with online music. I'd much rather have the CD as a backup, or to re-rip at higher quality when I have more storage, and if I buy it used, it's usually as cheaper or cheaper than online. As for pirated mp3's, who want's to bother with a copy ripped at unknown quality? I might accept an mp3 of a group I don't know, but if I like them, I'll order the CD.
The ipod works with lots of download sites. I have an ipod, I don't buy from itunes. I download a lot of legal tunes. I have used emusic, disclogic, mindawn, magnatune, digitalsoundboard.net, studiodownloads.net, livephish.com, primuslive, live metallica.com, and some others I am probably forgetting. If none of these places have the music I want, I just order the cd for usually less than $12 new or $8 used. (which usually winds up being cheaper than most of the download sites especially when you include buring and labelling cds) The "doesn't work with any major retailer" complaint seems to mean "doesn't work with windows media drm".
On the other hand market research seems to indicate that people do not want to own music, they simply want to rent it, by paying a subscription service and using the new windows media drm to allow subsription services to be used on portable players. If this is so, it will give M$ another monopoly and Apple will be screwed. I want to own all my music, the rest is radio. Rental is probably the music industry's dream scheme, they can sell you the same music over and over in perpetuity without having to come up with anything new.
Another take on this issue is that MP3 players have had the slowest and least market penetration (15% of households - Forbes) of any major consumer electronics product. So maybe this is not the wave of the future... maybe we don't know what's coming at all.
The ideal situation would be hundreds of these little sites popping up so that no one site has a huge selection, but you can get what you want somewhere with no drm. Lots of competition, good for everybody. Certainly successful bands could all make there own sites (Metallica, Phish, Primus) and screw the record companies now. Even some smaller bands are making a living with their own sites. This would also be the best situation for the ipod. Buy lossless music and then pick your own format, don't let someone pick it for you.
Creative has a zillion brands for their MP3 players, seemingly combined at random.
Look at the product list here: http://www.nomadworld.com/products/
That's a product list only a crooked bookkeeper could love.
They can't seem to decide what they want to focus on.
Worse, their large number of product names hinders cross-promotion. Promotion of a "Creative Zen Micro" probably doesn't aid sales of a "MuVo Slim".
By contrast, promoting the iPod Shuffle promotes the iPod brand as a whole. If the iPod Shuffle isn't quite what a person wants, they're more likely to look at other items in the iPod line.
If a "MuVo Slim" isn't quite what a person wants, what's to lead them to, say, a "Creative Zen Touch"?
Further, the number of brands Creative uses probably makes their share of the MP3 market look lower than it really is.
I mean, good lord, they even have an "Interactive Decision Maker" to help you decide which model is right for you. Damn thing might as well say "Get an iPod."
Creative's situation is so bad, there isn't even a single name you can use which encompasses all their MP3 players. You can talk about "iPods", but with Creative, all you can refer to is "Creative's MP3 players", which doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. Yet you can't say "a Creative", because that sounds dumb, and Creative makes more than just MP3 players.
September 2011: Looking for Cocoa/iOS work in Boston area Cocoa Programmer Quincy, MA
... in all EU countries, effective 7/7/99. IANAL, but I guess this directive had to be ratified by member countries, so the actual date may have varied. Italian government took three years to do so, YMMV. Not sure if directive applies if not ratified by your country.
The law is only valid for individual customers, not merchants. Apple, like many other manufacturers, only mentions the first year. Apparently (but again, IANAL), that's because the law actually addresses the party which sold you the item -- which may not be Apple. Apple offers to pay for the first year, the second is up to the actual vendor.
If you bought from a EU AppleStore, though, you should be able to get your assistance from Apple during the second year, too.
See here, esp. art. 5.
I've lost count of the number of iPod users who take them out of their pockets, and then do nothing with them.
This comment mystifies me. How can you tell that they're doing nothing? If they were doing something, how could you tell? Are people supposed to dance like in the commercials to prove to you that they're enjoying their iPods? Do you carefully watch their faces, and if a wave of orgasm isn't apparent, do you conclude that they're just poseurs?
One might posit that a sub-section of iPod users buy iPods because they're the thing to have right now based on what we know of human nature, but to conclude that on the weak evidence you have gathered makes you a real Dick Fucking Tracy. (Or would that be Sherlock Fucking Holmes?)
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Just a heads up for Creative... most iPod owners don't & won't care what other stores your player supports. You know why? A large majority of iPod owners use a Mac! (big surprise) The "other" online music stores have no Mac version! This is the same as Real having the gall to accuse Apple of not giving iPod owners choice, when Rhapsody doesn't work on a Mac user's OS of choice.
oh c'mon. were you using the same mp3's, encoded by the same program? were you using the line output in the ipod dock or plugging into the headphone jack? if you were plugging into the headphone jack, was the ipod volume turned up loud enough to distort? what was the equalizer setting? was "sound check" turned on? was the zen set up similarly?
i'm not discounting your experience, but don't complain when people think you're spewing bullshit if you don't provide enough information.
london is drowning and i live by river