Can't Succeed In The Marketplace? Sue Someone Who Does!

Posted by: Arik Hesseldahl on May 16, 2006

Creative Technology, the Singapore-based outfit behind the Zen brand of MP3 players is taking Apple to court over patent-infringement, and asking a U.S. court to ban the sale and import of the iPod. This is the same Creative Technology that just recorded a $114 million quarterly loss, which it attributed to, among other things, unsold inventory of MP3 players. But, really, there’s no connection between those two facts whatsoever.

This is also the same outfit that publicly announced that it would spend $100 million globally to market the Zen brand. Those are some results.

Here’s an unsolicited suggestion for Creative CEO Sim Wong Hoo: Throw out 80 percent of your MP3 product line and simplify it. Look at this lineup! Who can decide what they want when you’ve got 24 different models to choose from? Offer your customers one brand name, and within that no more than six different models: Three flash memory based, three hard drive based, all in different capacities.

And you might want to do something about that marketing team….

Meanwhile, you may have read that it actually is possible to be successful in the MP3 player business while not being Apple Computer.

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