Funai buys Philips Audio and Video

[Lex]

So Royal Philips Electronics is selling it's consumer oriented lifestyle entertainment division to Funai Electric.

It's an aisian deal, wonder what impact this will have on Philips products?

Of course we all know about the legendary Pronto remote, and the game changing TiVo products. What has Philips done lately before this, are there other products impacted? I wonder...

Read about it and see:

http://www.newscenter.philips.com/main/corpcomms/news/press/2013/20130129-Philips-transfers-Lifestyle-Entertainment-business-to-Funai.wpd#.UQlTZ2d8DRZ

It may just be a paper move more than anything, the existing products may well still be called Philips.

[Ovation]

The article I read (different source) suggested Philips was abandoning such products altogether to concentrate on medical equipment and lighting.

[Alaric]

Hmmm. It may just be paper shuffling , ultimately , but I don't know what Phillips' use of the term "..our partner for over 25 years" encompasses. Has Funai been buying them slowly , been acquiring licenses , etc.? At first glance it appears the Phillips name will be around for a while but it's so hard to pin down corporate doubletalk anymore , who knows? While I'm not a huge fan of what Phillips did with Marantz , they did keep the brand alive long enough to recover nicely. That alone keeps me interested in their (Phillips) future. Phillips seems to have been moving more towards the medical field over the last decade or two , so Funai's focus on consumer electronics may help the brand regain some footing in those areas.
It will be interesting to watch. Thanks for the heads up!

[Hdale85]

Yeah in the home theater category I don't really know much from Philips that's worth mentioning beyond the Pronto remote which I don't think is nearly as popular as it used to be. Their TV's haven't been very popular, and that's about all that I recall them making? They make good light bulbs though

[Alaric]

Light bulbs are important , too! Finding a bathroom at 3 AM is a good thing. Cuts down on those embarrassing garage "incidents".
Happy Birthday , Dougie!

[Hdale85]

Thanks Lee! And I agree lightbulbs are important although I'm not sure they are huge in lightbulbs so much anymore either. They were because they were one of the first companies doing CFL's and stuff. But now everyones sort of caught up to them and undercut them on price.

[Alloroc]

I used to do work for Philips - in fact it was my contract with Philips that made me and it was what attracted investment and ultimately it was what attracted the acquisition from a much larger engineering firm. I - well my company - built a number of their datacentres and cleanrooms over a 6 year period. So the point being I got to spend a lot of time in Eindhoven and see the company up close and personal. Philips in many ways was and to an extent still is a very innovative company. They just sucked at product presentation. The company has been planning for this day for years - I remember the conversations about this with senior management - when CE became utterly commoditised, sell CE and license the brand. Their most valuable asset, apart from the brand is their IP portfolio - which is massive. They'll never sell that, btw. The rest of their domestic appliance and consumer health range was always very profitable and that stays. It's really just the commoditised stuff that goes.

Lighting - now here's where they are really innovative.... It's not consumer lighting where they make their money. It's industrial lighting on a massive scale.... intelligent office, street, stadium floodlights - that sort of thing. And then medical - I actually built - well my company did - build the clean zone assembly floor in Holland for their MRI scanners... These machines at the time sold for 5 million euros each....

But when it comes to CE, they had the market over here for years in the entry level and high end TV business - never the mid-ground. They were also one of the earliest innovators in the plasma business however they merged and the sold their flat screen business to LG. They just could not keep pace. I remember when I saw of BluRay - probably 2002 at their R&D centre in Cambridge, UK - blown away... I was and still am under non-disclosure for certain things not yet realised.... Remember, Philips had a prototype of the laser based compact disc working in the late 60's....

Finally, the best thing they ever did in my opinion as a consumer was to spin out Marantz and merge it with Denon. They still have a very large shareholding of D&M.

Ultimately, Frans van Houten (the CEO) is right. Nobody wants Blu-ray players anymore. HD streaming is now a reality that the mainstream wants - be it iTunes, Hulu, Vudu or whatever. Or Pirate Bay even. Who here is waiting with anticipation for House of Cards on Netflix? I am! The first show funded by streamed media distributor! On this side of the pond the content retailers Virgin Megastores, Zavvi and now HMV are gone to the wall... You want a set of headphones for your phone or a speaker dock? Well you can buy the Dr.Dre ones or the Bob Marley ones. Crazy!

There's just a few die-hards like us lot left who prize the quality well engineered equipment extracts from well-mastered content. I wonder how long that'll last?! As the owner of a Boxee and having ripped and streamed 50GB Blu-ray rips, I can tell you it runs my Marantz BDP pretty close!

[Alaric]

Finally, the best thing they ever did in my opinion as a consumer was to spin out Marantz and merge it with Denon.

+1

There's just a few die-hards like us lot left who prize the quality well engineered equipment extracts from well-mastered content.

+2 :T I love to make broken things work , working things better , and denied those outlets , I love to admire the end product of those things done by people whose knowledge and skills far exceed mine. I need to see the "hand of a man" in a product. Younger generations describe me as "quaint". I can live with that.

[Hdale85]

I actually think we're moving into an age of DIY, with things like 3D printers, Laser Engravers, and milling machines dipping way down into the consumer affordable level and then with the ability to easily learn and design PCB's and order all the parts I see a HUGE surge in building your own electronics, control systems, and even complex devices! There are people building their own machines for sequencing DNA at home and what not! That sort of stuff amazes me and shows me there really is no limit to what one can do in their own home these days.

I agree Philips definitely had a big hand in a lot of the idea's that we use today though. They certainly are huge in the medical field, I see Philips devices at the doctors office all the time.