Sim Wong Hoo

Sim Wong Hoo (born 1955) is the CEO and Chairman of Creative Technology, a pioneer of computer sound systems and a designer and manufacturer of products for personal computers and personal digital entertainment devices.

Early Life and Career

Born in Melaka in Malaysia, he moved to Singapore to further his education and graduated from the Electrical & Electronic Engineering faculty of Ngee Ann Polytechnic in Singapore. He later accepted Singapore Citizenship. In 1 July 1981, Sim Wong Hoo with his school friend Ng Kai Wa set up shop in Pearl Centre in Singapore. He got his start running Creative as a computer repair shop. While doing this he developed an add-on memory board for the Apple II computer that they sold as well. Later, Creative started creating customized PCs adapted for the Chinese language which included enhanced audio capabilities so that the device could produce speech and melodies. The success of this audio interface led to the development of a stand-alone sound card named Sound Blaster that Creative marketed. Sound Blaster was very successful and has been used as a standard of comparison for sound cards.

Success and Failures

Creative and Sim Wong Hoo achieved its greatest success with the landmark Sound Blaster line of audio card products. It was among the first dedicated audio processing card to be made widely available to the general consumer. Monaural Sound Blaster cards were introduced in 1989, and stereo cards followed in 1992 (Sound Blaster Pro). Wavetable MIDI was added with the 16-bit Sound Blaster AWE32 and AWE64 with 32 and 64 voices. In 1998, Sound Blaster Live was the first PCI-based sound card. Over the years, the Sound Blaster line has been greatly enhanced to provide 3D audio and home theater quality sound directly from a PC.

Creative dominated the PC audio market and remains unchallenged by a major competitor since the late 1990s which saw a legal tussle with Creative and Aureal Semiconductor. A series of lawsuits was filed by Aureal in 1998 which alleges infringements over various technology patents such as PCI audio and 2D/3D positional sound APIs. Creative responded by countersuing with a series of lawsuits for false advertising and various other claims. The situation was resolved when Creative acquired Aureal's assets in September 2000 for USD $32 million dollars.

One notably failure in the mid 1990s was Creative's venture into the CDROM market. Creative was forced to writeoff nearly USD $100 million dollars in inventory when the market collapsed due to a flood of cheaper alternatives.

Creative first entered the portable audio player market in 2000 with the launch of the Creative Nomad Jukebox. Creative remained a serious competitor in the portable audio player market until the entry of Apple with the iPod. In November 2004, Creative Labs announced a $100 million marketing campaign to promote their digital audio products, including the Zen range of MP3 players. As part of this 'war', Creative applied for and was granted a U.S patent no 6,928,433, "Automatic hierarchical categorization of music by metadata" which opened the way for potential legal action against Apple's iPod. It remains to be seen of this 'war' can be won against the popular iPod.

Creative declared a net loss of USD $113.8 million dollars for the third quarter of fiscal year 2006, ended March 31, 2006.

Achievements and Recognition

At age of 45, Sim Wong Hoo became the youngest billionaire in Singapore. He was also the first person to be named the Businessman of the Year twice, in 1992 and 1997. In 2002, he was named Person of the Year by the Singapore Computer Society in recognition of his contribution to the IT industry. Sim is widely considered to be the star entrepreneur of Singapore and he currently chairs Singapore's Technopreneurship 21 Private Sector Committee.

In 1999, Sim Wong Hoo released a book entitled "Chaotic Thoughts From The Old Millennium".

References

- Creative Technology, Ltd [1]

- Timeline of Creative vs Aureal lawsuits [2]

- Seno N. Alexandra, "Creative's Genuis", Asiaweek article, September 2000 [3]

- The Register, "Creative declares war on iPod", 18 Novemember 2004 [4]

- Press Release, "Creative Awarded U.S. Patent On Its Invention Of User Interface For Portable Media Players", 30 August 2005 [5]

- United States Patent and TradeMark Office Patent 6,928,433: [6]

- Press Release, "Creative Announces Q3 FY06 Financial Results"[7]

- Google Finance, Creative Technology Ltd [8]

See also

• No U-Turn Syndrome