FROM CHINATOWN TO TAKING ON CUPERTINO’S TECH GIANT

Sim founded Creative Technology with childhood friend Ng Kai Wa in 1981 as a small computer repair shop in Chinatown. Sim had been its chairman and chief executive since then.

The company was known for launching the Sound Blaster sound card in 1989, at that time a breakthrough in audio technology for personal computers. 

The firm also launched the Nomad series of portable audio players, which competed directly with Apple’s iPod and Sony’s digital Walkman. 

Sim sued Apple founder Steve Jobs for patent infringement in 2006 and won S$100 million in settlement from the American tech giant based in Cupertino, a city in California.

In an interview with business news channel CNBC in April 2020, Sim said: “It was something we had to do because Apple did not just, you know, infringe our patent.” 

He added: “Actually, Steve came to our booth, saw our products and liked the product. He saw the future of Apple there.”

Creative Technology was also the first Singaporean company to be listed on Nasdaq — America’s tech-heavy stock exchange — in 1992.

However, it voluntarily delisted in 2007 and is now trading on the Singapore Exchange, closing at S$1.76 on Thursday, a three-month high.

At its peak in early 2000, the company’s stock traded at about S$64. 

The company has also been losing money in recent years.

Its net loss for fiscal year 2022 ending June 2022 widened to US$10.99 million (S$14.77 million), compared to the US$7.62 million reported in 2021. 

Though critics have been saying that the company now pales in comparison to its peak, with its products arguably not reaching the heights achieved during the company’s heyday, Mr Chan of Ion Mobility said that “the hallowed halls of ‘world class products’ is already a peak that’s unreachable for many”. 

“(Creative Technology) sustained its peak for quite many years. It is certainly not a one-hit wonder in my view.” 

INSPIRATION FOR FORMER EMPLOYEES

Mr Leow Siew Kiat, 58, a former Creative Technology employee who had worked in the company for about 12 years starting in the early 1990s, spoke fondly of his former boss at Sim’s wake on Thursday held at the Garden of Remembrance building along Old Choa Chu Kang Road.

Mr Leow said that when he worked overseas, he noticed how his counterparts from other countries would somehow look up to those from bigger markets such as Japan and the United States, while Singaporeans such as himself viewed them as equals.

Mr Leow attributed this to Sim who had “put Singapore on the map of the technology world”, thereby inspiring Singaporeans to operate confidently at the global level as well.

“After working for Creative, when I worked in a multinational company… I always had that kind of confidence and pride, because of my experience working in Creative.”

Another former employee on whom Sim left an indelible mark was Howie Chang, who was only 21 years old and fresh out of school when he first joined Creative Technology in 2006 as a user interface designer.

Mr Chang, now 39, said that his interactions with Sim at the start of his career had imbued in him important values, and even inspired him to start his own company later in 2019. 

He founded Forward School based in Penang, Malaysia, which focuses on software engineering and data science programmes to impart skills to tertiary-level students and working adults.

Sim’s approach to learning was what inspired how he ran the school, Mr Chang said.

The Malaysian and Singapore permanent resident also said that it was Sim’s “big, hairy and audacious goals” that he had seen play out in his years in Creative Technology that inspired him to start a company in the first place. 

“He always, always set that bar extremely high, and I think that sort of caught on with me.”