Many people buy things to look at brands, not to pursue brands, but to give themselves a psychological comfort, and always feel that big brands are guaranteed.
But many of the brands that we are familiar with have become OEM goods.
In addition to the well-known Antarctic people, Hengyuanxiang and others, there is also a world-renowned brand, which has long become an OEM product.
That's it – Philips.
When it comes to Philips, the first reaction of the big guy is the "handle" in household appliances, and it has become a veritable leading enterprise with brands such as Panasonic and Toshiba.
But ah, you may not believe it: whether it is headphones, razors, televisions, washing machines, none of the Philips appliances in your hands are produced in their own core factory. Without exception, it's all OEM.
Today's Philips was once ridiculed as the "European Antarctic".
In the fifties of the last century, Philips was the pillar of semiconductors in Europe! Even up to today, the three companies that are quite important in the world -- ASML, NXP, and TSMC -- all originated from Philips.
That's strange, how did such a bullish enterprise fall to the present? Over the years, how did it "make" itself step by step?
This has to start with the history of Philips.
Philips' glorious history
In 1891, in a modest factory in the Netherlands, working overtime to manufacture carbon filament pole lamps, which were the predecessors of Philips.
Philips' founder, Gerald Philips, was a business-minded man, but not much.
He did not catch up with the light bulb industry, and when he wanted to enter the field, the light bulb industry already had its own leading enterprises.
At this time, Philips was still a small business with neither money nor background, and it was almost impossible to make a name for itself in this field.
But this didn't bother Gerald at all, he actually came up with some not-so-bright means to get Edison's General Electric's "tungsten lamp technology".
In this way, with the technology brought in, coupled with a marketing strategy that is far below the market price. Philips, an inconspicuous small company, has really successfully completed its first round of capital accumulation.
Philips' operation properly infringed on other people's patents and was soon sued in court.
Philips suffered a big loss, but you ask him if he regrets it? I guess he doesn't. After all, there was no such wave of capital accumulation, and there was no later Philips empire.
After this incident, Philips learned from the pain and set two goals for himself:
First, we must develop our own technology and make our own patented products;
Second, go out of Europe and face the international market.
In 1912, Philips covered its business sector to the United States, Mexico and other countries.
In 1914, Philips took nearly half of its profits to establish its own laboratory, NatLab, in the Netherlands, and began to develop its own patented technology.
Philips has hired a large number of scientific researchers with high salaries, and there is no limit to majors, fields, as long as you have an idea, Philips will immediately give you a grant, so that you can devote yourself to research and development, with a high degree of freedom.
This "ultra-free R&D policy" has attracted a large number of European and American researchers.
It was also from this year that Philips did not focus on the light bulb industry, but began to involve all kinds of electronic products, from razors and cameras to vacuum cleaners, air conditioning cases, etc., all kinds of essential electronic products for people's lives, it has its own patented products.
In 1963, Philips first introduced the small cassette cartridge. Later, there were video recorders, CD players, DVD players, Bluetooth technology and so on...... These technologies may seem ordinary now, but at the time, they were pioneers of cross-era significance.
It is with these technologies and products that the once little-known "pirated light bulb manufacturer" has transformed into a leading enterprise in the global home appliance industry.
However, when Philips wanted to enter the Asian market, it was stumped by well-known manufacturers such as Sony and Samsung.
At that time, East Asian manufacturing was on the rise, and it was clear that these Asian local companies were more popular with Asian consumers than Philips from Europe.
At that time, Philips realized that the electronics business would become more and more saturated, and they would be overtaken by other companies.
Philips and semiconductors "love hate"
So they must have a new direction, Philips is keenly aware that the development of the embryonic semiconductor industry, the future is likely to be a blue ocean.
In 1953, Philips invested a lot of money to establish the "Semiconductor Division" in the NatLab laboratory, and began to vigorously research and develop semiconductor-related technologies.
Over the next decade, Philips became the world's largest semiconductor producer as the backbone of the European semiconductor industry.
In the 80s, Philips developed an automated step-by-step lithography machine.
In 1984, Philips signed a partnership with an unknown small Dutch company, and the two companies jointly established ASML.
Although the company's development was very difficult at the beginning, with the strong support of Philips, ASML has become a world-renowned semiconductor manufacturer.
In 1987, ITRI and Philips jointly founded TSMC.
Like ASML, TSMC's development was not very smooth at the beginning, and it was still through the economic and technical support of Philips that it was able to get to where it is today.
By 1999, Philips' business focus had already shifted from the electronics business to the semiconductor business. It has successively sold a number of electronic business companies under its name and acquired integrated circuit companies at a high price.
Philips is so confident in its semiconductor business that in 2000 it publicly stated that it would double its profits in two years.
But no one expected that Philips, which had been unimpeded all the way, would soon kick the iron plate.
In 2001, the global chip market entered an ice age, and all semiconductor companies, including Philips, were hit hard.
Since then, Philips has been in the red, and by the end of the year, Philips had lost as much as $2.5 billion.
In order to alleviate the current situation of financial deficit, he had to start to transform. This year, Philips spun off more than 30 businesses under its name, selling what should be sold and discarding what should be discarded.
By the end of 2001, Philips had only five core business divisions: lighting, electronics, and household appliances, and later semiconductors and medical technology.
Even this failed to reverse Philips' loss-making situation, and it was not until 2003 that Philips returned to a profitable period.
Annoying operation
But what Philips himself didn't expect was that in recent years, in addition to their traditional electronics business, the medical system would become his second most profitable business.
After several years of transformation, Philips began to reflect on its choices, and it decided to re-select a potential business as their main business.
Perhaps it was the previous chip winter that made Philips completely lose confidence in the semiconductor industry, and he put all his chips on "medical technology" this time and began to gradually streamline several other core businesses.
Especially for semiconductors, Philips' operation has shocked all industry insiders.
In fact, since the 90s of the last century, Philips has sold all ASML shares in order to maintain other business development;
In 2003, when Philips decided to transfer the eight cores to the medical system, it began to sell TSMC's shares frantically, and soon sold off 16.2% of its TSMC shares.
He also threw away all the shares of other semiconductor companies in his hands.
Two years later, TSMC once jumped to the top 8 in the global semiconductor industry......
In 2004, Philips sold its PC monitor business to TPV.
In 2006, it sold its mobile phone business to China Electronics Information Industry Group.
The old way of the Antarctic people
Philips' life is legendary.
From the beginning of the halfway home, counterattack into a generation of business giants, to the tragic winter, the mysterious operation generally cut off the most promising semiconductor business......
He doesn't seem to have lost anything, but in fact he doesn't have any scum left.
Perhaps it was because of this big ups and downs that Philips began to give up on itself.
Since 2006, Philips has started a new business called the Lifestyle Business. The main purpose of this business is to rent and sell their own brands and earn licensing fees.
To put it bluntly, it is the old way of the Antarctic people - selling OEM and lying down to collect money.
These OEM products are all OEM by some unknown small factories, and Philips will control the quality of the products a little at the beginning. Later, he was completely rotten, and no matter how those foundries produced, they no longer provided them with technical support.
As a result, the Philips products on the market are uneven, and more and more consumers are finding that the Philips products they buy are becoming more and more "crotch-pulling", and they have not yet found after-sales sales.
In this way, consumers' trust in Philips became less and less, until later, they were no longer willing to pay for the old brand.
In 2021, Philips has sold its entire home appliance business to Hillhouse Capital. By this year, Philips had completely cut off its entire electronics business.
This also means that from this year onwards, all the Philips electronic products you buy are all OEM products, and none of them are made by itself.
epilogue
In fact, Philips' medical technology business did not do very badly, and by now, Philips' market value has reached $17 billion.
But compared to the semiconductor business, it is really a drop in the bucket. Today, TSMC alone has a market value of more than $500 billion, not to mention the shares of other semiconductor companies he once controlled.
If Philips could have calmed down a little longer, waited a little for two years, observed the development of the times, and kept semiconductors in his pocket, it would not have fallen into the field it is today.
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