Is Creative failin

Question

Outside of what you actually think about the players or the problems you may or may not be personally having Creative is being blown out of the water by apple.
I don't like Apple and I love my 40gb Zen Touch but for a company that wants to really make a splash the marketing---wait, what marketing ---has been just plain awful.
Everyday, everywhere is IPOD this IPOD that. It goes just beyond marketing dollars too. Company "A" is producing compatible features for the ipod, this car stereo can now interact with ipod. There a 50 million accessories for the ipod many not even made by Apple and virtually none for creative products. Everyone is scrounging for a quality case for the 40gb player or using Dell's docking station or using pda devices to hold their players in the car.
What car stereo is moving to be compatible with creative? Alpine car players and Onkyo home receivers have things in the works with Apple.
Maybe I'm just taking it a little personally but didn't the CEO come out and say something to the effect that they wanted X amount of market share or to be the leader in mp3 players or something to this affect. At least at this point they are failing in this regard.
I'm still happy with my player and it works perfectly. More accessories and compatibility would go a long way though for me personally and the company if they really want to compete.
my .02
Rich

Answer 1

Memnemon -
Your comment that Creative has (in the US and UK) has made a cheaper product is fine, but I question the "better product (with more features)" comment as being a bit of a blind or quick-to-judge comment.
"More features" is not necessarily good. Look at the history of cars and this is quite apparent - the gadgety products are not always the best sellers or rated the highest (and, quite often, the contrary is true). So, I don't agree at all that more features means the better product. I think we got started down this road (of "simplicity is good") thanks to Apple ... my last mp3 player was an absolute mess, a bunch of half-finished features (but it "won" the feature count!).
The crowds these two companies are drawing are quite different (in my opinion). The techno-geek (myself included!) that does an ounce of research will probably (unless they are a Mac lover) steer themselves in "any direction but Apple" (as did I). But Apple appears to be winning (as seen in that disgusting newspaper USA Today, which I unfortunately have outside my hotel room door each morning!) simply because they can afford to strong-arm anybody else and offer iPod discounts and what not in coffee shops and "trendy clothes" retailers. Because of this, they have created - in my opinion - little more than a fad. But, because of this high volume of sales, they can also afford to refine their product a bit more.
So, while I agree with you that the Zen Micro has much more potential than the iPod Mini, I would definitely argue that the iPod Mini is the much more refined/polished product <EM>at this point</EM> - which will sell itself quite well in the non-technical (artistic!) world. For me, I would be much happier with Creative if they left out all of the gadget/unnecessary stuff, and did not spread themselves too thin. If it were the other way around (Apple had this comlex, yet unrefined product that often seemed to have a mind of its own), would we not be saying "hey, I'm happy with this simple, <EM>robust</EM> player than that piece of unrefined garbage with its useless extra features" ? I have a feeling I would.