Due to constantly eroding market share in audio solutions for personal computers, Creative Technology reportedly plans to start selling sound processors to various parties and not focus solely on sales of standalone audio cards, some spokespersons for Creative said in an interview.

Even though Creative Technology commands a tiny percent of PC audio solutions market, it still has technologies that are considered by far superior compared to solutions offered by other providers, including C-Media or Realtek. But if solutions from the latter two companies either come for virtually free being integrated onto mainboards or on inexpensive audio cards, then Creative’s standalone audio cards are either pretty expensive, or have no obvious advantages for the end-user when compared with other solutions.

For some reason, Creative Labs does not want to offer its own-brand SoundBlaster audio cards at lower price-points, but the company has started to sell its X-Fi chips to third parties. Auzentech company has already announced its X-Fi Prelude 7.1 add-in-board based on Creative Sound-Blaster X-Fi audio processor and supporting such technologies as EAX 5.0, Dolby Digital Live, DTS Interactive and so on.

“There is a shift from sales of complete solutions to chipset solutions,” a spokesperson for Creative Technology is reported to have said in an interview with VR-Zone web-site.

Creative reportedly promises to provide third party add-in-card makers reference designs kits for its audio cards and may also assist them in development of improved versions of SoundBlaster products. The company who once did everything to get rid of its rivals now believes that higher amount of quality discrete audio cards on the market dominated by integrated solutions will be a benefit for Creative Labs.