The alliance will enable both Creative and Samsung to leverage each other's
unique strengths in furthering the leadership of both companies in today's
highly dynamic CD-ROM drive market. The two companies will work
together in a joint development effort to build CD-ROM drives that
incorporate unique features designed to further enhance its performance in
multimedia applications.
"Samsung Electronics' alliance with Creative Technology in this distinctive
strategic partnership offers both companies with broad opportunities to
integrate top-notch technology and to develop differentiated product lines
that expand our market reach through our combined channels," said Mr Y.H.
Han, director of Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd, South Korea.
Mr W.H. Sim, chairman/CEO of Creative Technology adds, "As the
information technology industry goes through turbulent times, Creative is
forging ahead with new business models that offer Creative and its suppliers
win-win opportunities. One prime example will be this unique alliance
where Creative and Samsung have broken new ground and structured a
winning combination of the latest technology, marketing prowess and strong
channel presence. We believe this will enable us to meet time-to-market
demands for high quality, low cost multimedia products."
The key terms of the agreement are as follows:
Manufacturing
Company's Background
Creative Technology Ltd. is the world's leading provider of advanced
multimedia solutions for personal computers, including sound, graphics,
communications and video conferencing products. The company's Sound
Blaster© technology has been accepted as the worldwide standard sound
platform for PCs, and the company's global distribution network is the most
extensive in the multimedia industry. Creative is focused on enhancing the
overall user experience by providing powerful, enabling, high-value
technology for the mass market.
Co-Development
Samsung and Creative's co-development effort for CD-ROM drive products
will leverage on Creative's extensive R&D and marketing experience in the
multimedia upgrade market. The drive products will demonstrate improved
performance to meet today's highly-demanding requirements of advanced
multimedia applications. In addition, the new drives will feature unique
enhancements that will offer more user-friendly integration of the drives in
today's multimedia PCs.
Samsung will be the key manufacturer of the newly co-developed products.
Utilising Samsung's experience and in depth expertise in consumer
manufacturing, this arrangement will ensure high quality and time-to-market
delivery, thus enabling both companies to respond to market situations
quickly.
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. is a leading producer of a diverse array of
products including audio and video equipment, consumer electronics,
computers and software products, monitors, peripheral, information systems,
telecommunications systems and semiconductors. With its headquarters in
Seoul, South Korea, Samsung Electronics is also the world's largest producer
of DRAM computer memory chips.
Copyright ©1995, 1996
Creative Labs, Inc.