Quote:
Originally Posted by G6Tanuki
I'm kind-of glad Philips has refocussed on monetizing IP rather than the low-level business of churning-out-stuff-to-consumers.
These days, 'fabrication' is cheap; the truly-wealth-creating end is the seriously-techie side of embedded algorithms and suchlike. The postgraduate brainpower to do this doesn't come cheap - but the physical on-chip implementation can be outsourced to silicon fab-plants in China etc.
As an example: look at ARM - they've got away from the hassle of physically making the melted-sand stuff and now sell their smartness for millions of pounds per year from a nice comfortable office on the outskirts of Cambridge.
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That's not really comparable. ARM is especially good in one thing and keep doing that in the best and most efficient way. Also, Philips did sometimes outsource assembly a bit while still in the design and manufacturing business (so they actually did what ARM did). Philips however wasn't just in one market niche and that's where the comparison seems to fail. It's hard to see Samsung going that way anytime soon. Samsung is essentially what Philips was and still could have been business wise.