Creative Technologies' CEO and founder, Sim Wong Hoo, passed away on January 4, 2023 at the age of 67.
Sim, who is a citizen of Singapore, is the figure behind the Sound Blaster brand, the sound card that is perhaps the most famous in the world. sound card? Sound Blaster? What the heck is that?
A sound card, or perhaps a digital to analog converter (DAC) to be precise, is a component that converts digital audio signals from a PC, or other device, to analog to be forwarded to speakers, headphones, and the like.
Currently, maybe all PCs have a 3.5mm audio port, but there was a time when not all PCs had that port. So users need to add a sound card to their PC, and this Sound Blaster from Creative Labs is one of the products.
Because of that, there were several PCs in the Windows 95 era that needed to add the label "Sound Blaster compatible" to indicate that the PC had an audio port and could output sound.
By its 30th birthday in 2019, Creative had sold more than 400 million Sound Blaster units in total. Apart from Sound Blaster, they are also famous for their MP3 player products called Nomad and Zen. Oh yes, they also successfully sued Apple for violating Zen patents, and reconciled with a value of USD 100 million (in 2006).
Of course Sim's success cannot be achieved immediately. At first, Sim wanted to build a talking computer. Creative Labs was founded in Singapore in 1981, and until 1986, sales of the PCs they made were still very poor.
However, the turning point for Creative Labs occurred when they exhibited their Cubic CT music board at a US computer exhibition, which turned out to be selling well. Even the profit from several hundred sound cards according to Sim is equivalent to all their income from the previous PC business.
Sim himself is arguably an example of a very successful startup from Singapore. Creative Labs is to become the first Singaporean company to be listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange.
After Sim died, his position at Creative was temporarily filled by Lee Kheng Nam as chairman, and Song Siow Hui as interim CEO.