Philips

Philips, in full Royal Philips NV, major Dutch manufacturer of consumer electronics, electronic components, medical imaging equipment, household appliances, lighting equipment, and computer and telecommunications equipment.

Philips & Company was founded in 1891 by Frederik Philips and his son Gerard, who had been an engineer with the Anglo-American Brush Electric Light Corporation Ltd. Gerard Philips continually experimented to improve the longevity of lightbulbs, at the same time optimizing production procedures. His younger brother Anton Philips later joined the firm, adding the commercial savvy that formed the basis for the company’s international expansion. The company remained driven by technology, however, often striving for high quality rather than low cost. In later years the company was often slow to bring its innovative technologies to market.

The Philips sons established an autocratic management style, with a tradition of taking care of their workers from the cradle to the grave. Philips built housing, schools, and hospitals and, from 1900 onward, provided free medical aid. Members of the Philips family led the company until 1977 and maintained great influence well into the 1980s.

Philips benefited from the Netherlands’ neutrality in World War I by capturing many new markets. In 1924 Philips, together with the American manufacturer General Electric Company and Osram GmbH (now a wholly owned subsidiary of German manufacturer Siemens AG), formed the Phoebus cartel in order to divide up the lightbulb market worldwide and to set the standard life of a lightbulb at 1,000 hours. Critics claimed that the cartel stifled innovation and competition in lighting for several decades. By 1919 Philips had expanded into the production of radio tubes. In 1927 it introduced a simple affordable radio, and by 1933 it was the world’s largest radio manufacturer.

In the 1930s Philips shifted much of its production outside the Netherlands to avoid the import controls that many countries established during the Great Depression. Just before the outbreak of World War II, Philips moved its headquarters to Curaçao, keeping the company out of German control. Nevertheless, Philips’s role in the war became the subject of some controversy.

After 1945 Philips expanded its product range. It launched the Philips record label in 1951, acquired Mercury Records in 1960, and continued to invest in record labels such as Deutsche Grammophon, Decca, and Motown through its PolyGram subsidiary (sold in 1998). Philips was much less successful in entering the computer business. By the time the company released its P-1000 mainframe system in the mid-1960s, the IBM 360 was well established as the market standard. The company did better with a range of minicomputers in the 1970s but missed out on the personal computer revolution. In 1986 Philips launched a personal computer with a proprietary operating system, years after other manufacturers had accepted Microsoft Corporation’s MS-DOS as the market standard. In 1992 Philips exited the computer hardware business, though it remained an important supplier of components to the industry.

In 1963 Philips launched a small battery-powered audio tape recorder that used a cassette instead of a loose spool. Philips let other manufacturers reproduce the technology royalty-free, quickly establishing cassette tapes as a standard worldwide. Philips fared less well with its video technology. Although it demonstrated the world’s first videocassette recorder (VCR) in 1971, the company was slower to market than the Japanese, who launched Betamax in 1975 and VHS in 1976. Philips did not start production of VHS players until 1984.

Meanwhile, Philips had developed a new technology to play back video, using a laser to read information from a disc. Introduced in 1978, LaserDisc technology never caught on, but it did lead to another major success: the compact disc (CD). A key agreement with Sony Corporation in 1979 and a series of deals with music companies ensured the format’s success.

In a series of acquisitions in the 1970s, Philips established a position in the American consumer electronics market, starting with the purchase of television maker Magnavox in 1974. However, Philips fared poorly in competition with Japanese consumer electronics. In 1991 Philips launched CD-I, a multimedia player aimed at the living room. More expensive than electronic game consoles and lacking the capabilities of personal computers, the CD-I player never caught on. In 1992 the digital compact cassette was introduced as a digital successor to the audio cassette. It faced competition from Sony’s MiniDisc, but neither format lived up to commercial expectations.

By the early 21st century, Philips was also a leading producer of portable defibrillation units, ultrasound systems, and computed tomography (CT) scanners. Philips has manufacturing and marketing subsidiaries throughout the world.