Sim Wong Hoo, founder of Sound Blaster maker Creative Labs, has died
Sim Wong Hoo, who founded Sound Blaster producer Creative Technology in and remained at its head ever since, has died. A statement released by the company said Sim "passed away peacefully" on January 4.
Creative Technology—known as Creative Labs in North America—was a groundbreaking player in the early days of PC gaming thanks to its long-running series of audio cards. After initially launching as the Creative Music System in , the famous Sound Blaster line debuted in , and quickly took over the market: Ad Lib, which prior to the arrival of Sound Blaster cards was the effective standard for PC gaming audio, lost so much ground so quickly that it was forced to file for bankruptcy in
The Sound Blaster series evolved through multiple generations after the release of that first card. My second sound card (ironically, replacing an Ad Lib) was a Sound Blaster Pro, which came out in and helped push the company's global revenues to well over $1 billion by the mids.
The advent of onboard audio later took a big bite out of consumer-level sound card sales, and Creative's efforts to move into other technol
‘I think I’ve done my job’: Creative Technology’s Sim Wong Hoo a generous, feisty, passionate man
SINGAPORE – I first met the late Mr Sim Wong Hoo when I was a rookie reporter in and covering the financial results of Creative Technology, the company he founded in
He was already the poster boy for Singapore technopreneurship but wore his fame lightly. He would personally welcome every journalist walking in through the doors of Creative’s headquarters at International Business Park in Jurong, and demonstrate the firm’s latest products.
News of his sudden death on Wednesday at the age of 67 has evoked grief, with many people expressing gratitude over how he had been an inspiration to them.
Former foreign minister George Yeo, a non-executive director on Creative’s board, said he has lost an old friend. “Still remember the evening he presented me and (then) President Ong Teng Cheong with a Nomad MP3 player storing 12 songs. He was always bubbling with ideas. Never left a meeting with him without new inspirations,” Mr Yeo wrote in a Facebook post.
I remember him for his passion for music and technology, and how, like a typical engineer, he gushed about tech specification breakth
SINGAPORE - Starting as a small computer repair shop in Chinatown, Creative Technology was a pioneer in the personal computer audio sector and eventually grew into a multibillion-dollar tech giant.
Its founder, Mr Sim Wong Hoo, firmly cemented his legacy as Singapore’s first technopreneur. Here are 10 facts about Mr Sim, who died on Wednesday at the age of
1. He and his siblings were raised by his enterprising mother
Mr Sim was the 10th child out of five boys and seven girls in his Zhao’an Hokkien family, and was raised in a kampung in Bukit Panjang. His father died in , when Mr Sim was 12 years old.
He inherited his entrepreneurial spirit and grit from his mother, Mrs Sim-Tan Siok Kee, who raised the family single-handedly by rearing animals, farming produce and going door to door to sell eggs.
2. He graduated with a diploma in electrical and electronics engineering
Mr Sim completed secondary school at Bukit Panjang Government High, and studied electrical and electronics engineering at Ngee Ann Polytechnic.
3. He founded Creative Technology with a childhood friend
Mr Sim started Creative Technology with his Ngee Ann Polytechnic schoolmate and childhood friend, Mr
Singaporean inventor and tech pioneer Sim Wong Hoo passed away on January 4th at the age of Sim may not be a household name these days, but he founded Creative Technology (or Creative Labs in the US), the company behind the Sound Blaster brand of sound cards, back in Sound Blasters were some of the first sound cards available to consumers, and there was a time when you had to make sure your system worked with them if you wanted to listen to music and play games.
Sim established his business in the US and started selling Sound Blasters a few years later, after which Creative became the first Singaporean company to be listed on the Nasdaq exchange. The integration of sound boards into the motherboard ended Sound Blaster's popularity, but Bloomberg says the cards provided audio for more than million PCs.
Under his leadership, Creative also launched a range of MP3 players, and Sim once tried to take on Apple by spending $ million on advertising and marketing in its bid to dethrone the iPod. In , Creative sued Apple for violating its patent for portable media system menus. The companies filed more lawsuits against each other after that before Apple settled with Creative and p
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