Sound Blaster
Prior to the years was over, Mr Sim had set up shop in San Francisco.
In 1989, Imaginative released the Sound Blaster PC sound card – the item that impressed the world and boosted the company’s fortunes.
The technology was groundbreaking at the time, as Aloysius Low, co-founder and editor of tech evaluation site Can Buy or Not, described.
“At that time in the 1990s, many PCs were essentially single-track speakers that only did like ‘beeps’ and ‘boop boops’. So when you have a sound card installed, you have the audio that you are so utilized to hearing today– music, multi-track signals, real-world sounds basically,” he said on CNA’s Singapore Tonight on Thursday.
“So picture going from beeps to boops to state, hearing a Backstreet Boys song, I think that was a massive video game changer.
“That really put Creative on the tech world map– the eyes of the world focused on it. Everybody you understood at that time had a Sound Blaster card which’s what really made your PC stand apart.”
By December 1990, the Sound Blaster had actually ended up being the top-selling PC add-on product in the world, helping to grow Creative’s income from US$ 5.4 million in 1989 to US$ 658 million in 1994.
Regrettably for Creative, they did not totally capitalise on their first-mover advantage.
“The one significant thing I believe Innovative failed to see was the opportunity to certify its technology,” Mr Low said.
“What happened back then was that sound cards were slowly becoming outdated as onboard sound was ending up being the standard. And since Creative didn’t want to accredit its technology, Realtek, which is another semicon company, came and used up that market,” he added.
“So every motherboard, every PC element, uses Realtek innovation rather of Creative. Which’s a substantial miss out on due to the fact that Creative could have controlled the industry.”