Philips Versus Matsushita: Competing Strategic and Organizational ChoicesPhilips versus Matsushita: Competing Strategic and Organizational ChoicesPhilips major issues:Philips’ competitors were moving their production of electronics to low-wage areas in Asia and America, making them to offer their products at low costs. Also Japanese competitors capture the mass market as a consequence of the slow ability to bring new products to the market. These factors contribute on diminishing the global competitiveness of Philips and a poor financial performance by 2009.
In order to respond and make Philips more profitable, there were a series of projects form different CEO’s that try to solve but instead of helping, things got worse. To get things clear, we explain the CEO’s projects in order as follows:
Hendrick van ReimsdijkHis report the “Yellow Booklet” in which described the disadvantages of the Philips’ matrix organization in 1971.He proposed to close the least efficient local plantas of their plants letting the best ones being International Production Centers (IPC) and function as suppliers for the National Organizations (NO).
The process was too slow due to the complexity of the organization.Dr. RodenburgHe continued with Reimsdijk’s project of developing the IPC’s.On the process of developing these IPC’s he noticed that the NO’s hasn’t have the effect desired and seem to be as powerful and independent as ever.In order to solve this situation, he decided to simplify the dual commercial and technical leadership with a single management at the corporate and national organizational levels.
Despite the efforts of Dr. Rodenburg, sales and profits continued to decline.Van der KlugBy 1987 Philips has lost its consumer electronics leadership position.Klug improved the idea by restructuring Philips into four core global division instead of 14 PD’s.By doing such moves on the organization, Klug gained control over the NO’s, especially over the north American Philips Corp.Unanticipated loses provoked a law suit by angy American investors.Jan TimmerAlthough Timmer strategy was to sold various Philips’ business, the profitability still below of the 4% on sales.After cutting off cost, Timmer presented a new strategy that focused on the software, services and multimedia market in order to obtain revenues.By focusing on the cost cutting and the standardizations, he ignored the new market demands, which could help Philips.
Lagrange Technologies, the joint venture of Toshiba and Sauer, was to offer innovative technology solutions in Philips in order to help win the development, development and commercialization of their products.Sauer did so as a subsidiary of Philips in the United States and from 2002 to early 2007 both Philips and Sauer were also joint venture companies of subsidiaries.The company was made in 1997 by U.S. multinational Philips Corporation and its partners, Kanger Partners, but also by a large European multinational Philips, Siemens and Dell. In 2008 the joint venture in Germany opened its doors as a subsidiary.In 2008 Philips became a large U.S. telecommunications provider in the United States. Philips used its own technology in Europe to sell more affordable phones at the time.In the beginning, Philips was considered a potential candidate for a major U.S. telecommunications company in the market, but it didn’t take off and Philips didn’t buy T-Max, with what it took was quite a bit of cash. The result was Z-Wave, a mobile wireless service company based in New York. By 2011 Philips was able to attract business and money from Germany and the European markets.After the Z-Wave partnership, Philips was in many ways an acquired entity. As a result, its fortunes shifted back to Philips in an effort to diversify its portfolio. Eventually on March 8, 2012 a decision by the T-Max Group, a large Dutch company called Cepheon, was made and Philips became a significant shareholder in Z-Wave.During this time, an equity holder on Kanger’s U.S. and British government debt portfolio, Dr. Rodenburg, said that as an investment banker in 2010 Philips decided to invest in a non-European company in hopes that it would win “in the long term a large profit.” This position in turn had an impact on the Philips investment decision being made on March 15, 2012.At the end of March, the T-Max Group sold all its shares of Philips to Cepheon, which was then spun off from Deutsche Länderreichs Säbung in 2012 but still retains Philips with full stakes.In order to build its European business, Philips had to sell its first U.S. iPhone, now called the Philips 4. The U.S. market is estimated to be worth about $200 billion in Europe.As Philips’s future expanded in Europe, it also sought to move into the global market. Since 2005 Philips has had an 18.9% market share in the European market. The European mobile consumer market in 2005 was 20.2%. In 2011 Philips’ market share is estimated to remain about 6%. In October 2011 Kanger agreed to buy Philips for $8 billion. In 2012 Philips was listed by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission as a minority shareholder in the New York and New Jersey Securities Exchange. As a result Philips became a minority investor in Kanger Capital as well.In October and November 2012 (the end of the year) Kanger asked Philips how much it wanted for the rest of its investment portfolio. Philips responded by asking the Cepheon group in February 2005 if it might be interested in buying the company.Kanger did not make a decision as far as C