[SINGAPORE] Homegrown electronics firm Creative Technology has retrenched about 40 staff, or 14 per cent of its workforce, as the tech layoff wave continues its rampage, The Straits Times has learnt.
Confirming the layoffs, a company spokesman said: “Creative Technology has undertaken a decision to restructure parts of its business to adapt to the evolving market conditions. As part of this transformation, it had to undergo a staff retrenchment exercise.”
The spokesman, however, declined to confirm the number of affected staff, and if they are all located in Singapore. According to its corporate website, Creative has more than 280 employees worldwide – a fraction of the size of the company’s workforce during the boom years of the 2000s.
The Straits Times understands that the restructuring affected several departments, including sales and marketing.
“This decision was not taken lightly as our employees have been the heart of our company, and we deeply appreciate the hard work, dedication, and passion they have brought to our organisation,” said the spokesman. He added that the firm would support affected staff through the exercise, which was conducted in line with the Manpower Ministry’s guidelines.
“We believe this restructuring will allow us to build a stronger, more sustainable future; one that ensures long-term success for our company, our employees and the customers we serve. We are committed to working to get Creative back on a sustainable trajectory ahead,” he said.
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For the first six months of its fiscal year ended Dec 31, 2024, Creative’s net loss widened to US$6.1 million from US$4.1 million in the year-ago period. This was despite higher net sales of US$37.4 million, a rise of 18 per cent from US$31.8 million in the year-ago period, from selling new audio products, including the Super X-Fi earbuds and headphones.
The group had warned that uncertainty over the import tariffs announced by the Trump administration, as well as potential retaliatory measures from the affected countries, could increase inflationary pressures and affect consumer demand.
Creative’s retrenchment follows a global tech trend, which started in 2022.
According to figures from Layoffs.fyi, which tracks layoffs in the technology industry, hundreds of thousands of employees in tech firms have been given the pink slip since 2022.
In 2024, 548 tech firms terminated more than 150,000 employees. In the first two months of 2025 alone, more than 13,300 people globally have lost their jobs. Those affected include employees at Meta, TikTok, Dyson, Microsoft and Google, some of whom were based in Singapore.
In a Feb 28 bourse filing, Creative said it was on a global hunt for a “dynamic and visionary” replacement for its chief executive officer Song Siow Hui, who retired in February after more than three decades with the company. Executive chairman Dr Tan Jok Tin is the interim chief executive officer.
Song’s appointment came after the unexpected death in January 2023 of former chief executive officer Sim Wong Hoo, one of Singapore’s most famous technology entrepreneurs.
Under Sim, who founded the firm in 1981, Creative grew substantially in the 1990s and put Singapore on the world map with its wildly-popular Sound Blaster card, launched in 1989.
The product was a game changer in allowing multimedia content to come alive on a personal computer. They were outselling competitors by a ratio of seven to three through the 1990s due to their affordability and quality. More than 400 million units of the product have been sold since.
Creative became the first Singapore company to list shares on the Nasdaq in 1992.
It is also the first Singapore firm to wage war with Apple over portable music players. Creative had launched its Nomad MP3 player in 1999, two years before Apple unveiled the iPod.
This invention would soon change the way people consume music on the go, pioneering the way thousands of pieces of music could be offered on a handheld device without the user having to fumble with physical media like CDs (compact discs) and cassette tapes.
In 2006, Creative sued Apple for patent infringements and walked away with a US$100 million settlement.
Creative also rolled out other music players like the Nomad Jukebox Zen, which doubled as a portable storage device for other media such as photos and videos. However, its products ultimately lost out as Apple’s music player gained popularity. THE STRAITS TIMES
