Philips and the death of Europe's last electronics giant [video]
It&#x27;s not only Philips that has bitten the dust, there&#x27;s been a succession of other large Western electronic companies that have either gone out of business or that are now only a shadow of their former selves. Here&#x27;s a partial list:<p>Pye Industries, UK<p>EMI (Electric &amp; Musical Industries), UK<p>Marconi, UK<p>AWA (Amalgamated Wireless Australiasia), Australia<p>Telefunken, Germany<p>Thompson CSF, France<p>HP Hewlett Packard, USA<p>Kodak, USA<p>Polaroid, USA<p>Varian Associates, USA<p>Ampex, USA<p>General Radio, USA<p>Philco, USA<p>Admiral, USA<p>RCA (Radio Corporation of America), USA<p>Philips, NL - as mentioned<p>I used to work for RCA and back then it was the largest electronics company in the world and Philips was second. When RCA failed, Philips became the biggest but unfortunately its time at the top was short-lived.<p>There&#x27;s several things that seem to characterize many of these failures, the first is that when founders leave or die companies often seem to lose drive and direction, and second companies become too big and diversification seems to kill their R&amp;D&#x2F;innovation.<p>For example, RCA lost its direction and fell apart when its founder David Sarnoff died and his son took the helm. Similarly, another spectacular failure was Hewlett Packard when its last founder died.<p>That said, there are exceptions such as Apple—but then it may not have been in existence long enough to tell, it hasn&#x27;t been around anywhere near as long as say, Philips has. Moreover, it&#x27;s highly dependent on Asian manufacturing, in the long-term, that may be Apple&#x27;s Achilles&#x27;s heel.<p>Still, I think that&#x27;s only part of the problem. Manufacturing and innovation in Western countries are now in a state of malaise and they&#x27;re being quickly overtaken by Asian countries such as China. Like it or not, the West generally is in a state of decline.