Royal Philips NV said yesterday it plans to spin off its fast-growing LED parts business into a separate company, to win new customers and to capitalize as manufacturers integrate LED lights into an ever-widening array of products.
Philips, the world’s largest lighting producer, says the separation will be complete by early next year, but it is not clear yet whether the division will seek a separate listing, or if it will remain within Philips for a time before it is sold. Philips executive Pierre-Yves Lesaicherre, who heads the parts division, will remain as CEO.
LED sales are surging, as they can emit light of different colors and need less energy than traditional lights. Manufacturers such as Philips, General Electric Co and Cree Inc of the US, as well as Germany’s Osram GmbH, which was spun off from Siemens AG last year, all saw their LED sales rise at well above double digit rates last year, even as the price per bulb fell.
Philips’ LED parts business, which is a major supplier to carmakers, had sales of 1.4 billion euros (US$1.91 billion) last year.
Philips is prepared to become a minority shareholder in the parts business and will remain a big customer as it continues to sell its own branded lights and services, chief executive Frans van Houten said. The spin-off was not due to concerns LEDs themselves are becoming a commodity, despite recent price declines, he added.
“I can assure you it is a very sound business with great margins and good profitability... At this stage, given the strong intellectual property and differentiation” of Philips’ LEDs, we think we can compete very well with Asian competitors,” he said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy