Philips is one of the largest electronics companies in the world. In 2010, its sales were €25.42 billion. The company employs 119,000 people in more than 60 countries.
Philips is organized in a number of sectors: Philips Consumer Lifestyle (formerly Philips Consumer Electronics and Philips Domestic Appliances and Personal Care), Philips Lighting and Philips Healthcare (formerly Philips Medical Systems).
The Philips Company was founded in 1891 by Gerard Philips and his father Frederik as a family business. Frederik Philips, being a banker in Zaltbommel, financed the purchase and setup of an empty modest factory building in Eindhoven where Philips started the production of carbon-filament lamps and other electro-technical products in 1892. This first factory survives as a Museum devoted to light sculpture.
In 1895, after the first difficult years and going nearly bankrupt, Gerard's 16 years younger brother Anton entered the family business as a sales representative at the request of his father. Since then, due to Anton's brilliant business talent, the family business began to expand rapidly resulting in 1907 in the foundation of the N.V. Philips’ Metaalgloeilampfabriek (the Philips Lightwire-bulb Factory Inc) in Eindhoven, followed in 1912 by the foundation of the N.V. Philips' Gloeilampenfabrieken. (the Philips Light-bulbs Factories Inc). After Gerard and Anton Philips, who were first cousins once removed of Karl Marx, changed their family business by founding the Philips Incorporation, they laid the base of the later electronics multinational.
In the 1920s, the company started to manufacture other products, such as vacuum tubes (also known worldwide as 'valves'). In 1939 they introduced their electric razor, the Philishave (marketed in the USA using the Norelco brand name).
Philips was also instrumental in the revival of the Stirling engine. [+]
