Creative Announces Zii EGG and Plaszma Platform

After many years of anticipation, ZiiLABS and Creative have finally pulled out the true successor to its fabulous ZEN Vision:M. Quite stunning, given the entire scope of what is currently going on for Creative- sales and profit margin shrinking, debt mounting the bottom line inching towards red, and brand favoribility falling within the eyes of the technology world. As a Creative fan for quite a long time, it’s finally time to breathe a sigh of relief and get back onto our fanboy horses. (Clarified thanks to Sim… Creative is currently debt-free. There have been several unprofitable quarters of late that have stressed them financially, but after a few moves remain debt-free. Thanks, Sim.)

Plaszma Platform

At the forefront of this new player is the Plaszma Platform. This is a combination of the Zii EGG device, which will be discussed in-depth later, and the Plaszma software side. While ZiiLABS has written their own version of Linux for the device, it will offer Android. At launch, the Zii EGG developer’s edition will only include the Plaszma OS, but an installer for Android will be available shortly after launch, according to the press release. The Plaszma OS is written to harness the power of the powerful ZMS-05 chip, and opens up the ability to code full 3D applications and games. Also in the operating system is a desktop version of Opera 9.7. This means, unlike its primary competitor on the iPhone, which supports a specialized version of the Safari browser, the Plaszma OS supports full web browsing, including “Web 2.0 capabilities”, which includes Adobe Flash Lite 3.1. While Flash support will be available shortly after launch, this gives the EGG a big advantage because it means out of the box Hulu (in available regions) and YouTube support. The system looks drop dead gorgeous on the marketing photos, so if that is the actual interface, the beautiful ZEN user interface seems to live on with Plaszma.

The SDK for Plaszma also appears to be wooing the open source community with its extensive support. Most importantly, perhaps, is native C and C++ development. While the codec support hasn’t officially been unveiled, sources inside Creative have rumored that it surpasses the Vision:M and Vision:W in codec support. One of the reasons that the Vision:M and Vision:W were successful was the wide range of codec support, and it’s exciting to see that the engineers realized this and added on.

New Creative Player in 2009

Something is coming. We don’t know if it’s Creative’s big salvo against the iTouch, but it’s highly likely Creative is releasing a touchscreen player in 2009. Why? A neat little article on India’s Enterpriser website neatly lays out what is coming in 2009. Included in this plan is an upgrade to the ZEN line with higher capacity players, easier UIs and a more stylish design. It’s that time of year that makes us Creative fans get really excited, and makes us start dreaming of what our dream Creative player would be.