Philips seeks to regain lead in PC monitors

Philips Consumer Electronics (PCE) Philippines is bent on regaining its leading position in the local computer monitor industry through a groundbreaking technology that delivers the brightest and sharpest video and photo screen display.

Tony Lim, Philips general manager, said yesterday that they would like to recapture the company’s lost market share through a more comprehensive range of products and competitive pricing which would respond to the needs of all sectors of society.

Philips was the country’s leading computer monitor vendor six years ago but was overshadowed by more aggressive vendors.

This time, Lim said they intend to be among the top three preferred monitor manufacturers in the Philippines as in the case of China, Singapore, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand and Pakistan, among other Asian countries.

Already, he said that there is a positive response to the firm’s marketing efforts with a 31-percent increase in the units sold last year, reaching 414,000 over the 1998 figure of 341,000.

According to him, Philippine buyers, particularly the mass market, is very price sensitive, thus, Philips tries to make the monitors more affordable without sacrificing quality.

For instance, the company has come up with LightFrame, a technology which attempts to bring television-quality display to most new Philips monitors.

The revolutionary LightFrame hardware and software package works in tandem to boost the brightness and sharpness of a monitor’s video signal when and where a user wants stepped-up performance for viewing movies or photos.

"We want to be the number one provider of computer monitor solutions worldwide spanning the whole display environment," Lim said as he noted that Philips already placed second worldwide and first in Europe as to the most number of units shipped out in 1999. – Marigold Yao-Endriga