Imagine a company which produces sound cards. Their sound cards do not work properly under Windows Vista. At least not as good as they were working for Windows XP. So, there comes a young programmer and develops new drivers that actually work.
You would guess that the company offers this guy a job, right? Not so Creative. They blame the young Brazilian to “steel their goods”. Oh man, no wonder those guys make losses. If they themselves would make their products work, this young programmer could do something more “creative” in his spare time, than fixing drivers of sound cards (that should actually work out of the box).
To me it seems like Creative designed those Vista drivers with certain flaws as a business strategy, so they can sell more “premium products”, which are probably the same, just with a driver that actually works. From a legal point of view, it might be their right to “castrate” their sound cards (I am not a lawyer).
But from a business point of view I wouldn’t call it clever.
The actions of their vice president of corporate communications, Phil O’Shaughnessy, might do more harm to the company than they might help. I am not sure if all those PR guys are already prepared for a world WITH internet. Things that might have worked for the last 20 years of PR might not working so well any more. Things have changed and PR guys should learn that, I guess.
Wake up! Welcome to the 21st century!
Customers communicate worldwide. We ALL have to live with globalization. I just hope for the guys at Creative that their shortsightedness might not have a too negative impact on their business.
I am not too sure if those things are really well thought by the companies. For my part I won’t buy a sound card of this company. I don’t like how they treat people that help others to make stuff work. I am not sure how long customers will cope with practices like this.