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Seoul, S Korea — Dec 31, `07 — LG.Philips LCD announced today that it will showcase its newest line-up of public displays at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2008 in Las Vegas.

LG.Philips LCD’s innovative new technologies for public displays center on increasing interactivity and viewability.

Multi-touch interface capabilities create a never-before-seen level of interactivity by allowing users to manipulate objects on screen, using both hands at once and even offering the precision necessary to recognize handwriting.

Another technology, transflective backlights, tackles one of the key challenges in developing public displays: readability in all lighting conditions, including direct sunlight.

LG.Philips LCD’s public display products featured at CES 2008 include:

52-inch Multi-touch Screen – World’s Largest Multi-touch Display
LG.Philips LCD’s 52-inch multi-touch panel for public and interactive displays is not only the world’s largest, it is also one of the most responsive, able to recognize input from either a touch of a finger or more precise writing instruments. It uses an infrared image sensor that gives it the ability to recognize two separate touch points as well as gestures. It boasts some of the industry’s highest specifications, with a 90 Hz touch response time, 1920 x 1080 Full HD resolution and a light transmission rate of 95 to 100 percent.

47-Inch Triple View LCD – World’s Largest and Highest Resolution Triple View Display
LG.Philips LCD’s 47-inch Triple View LCD features Full HD 1920 x 1080 resolution, can reproduce 1.07 billion colors and has a brightness of 250 nits. This display is an ideal solution for applications such as store directories and advertising at shopping malls. By splitting the light from the panel into separate paths, it is able to show three completely different images to people standing at different angles relative to the display.

47-inch Double-sided LCD for Public Displays
LG.Philips LCD’s 47-inch Double-sided LCD is two-sided display that uses a single backlight. At only 70 mm thick, it is 30 percent thinner than conventional models, but its luminance of 500 nits equals that of regular panels.

42-inch Transflective LCD for Outdoor Use
LG.Philips LCD’s 42-inch transflective display for outdoor use boasts an impressive 1,500 cd/m2 luminance in outdoor light, greatly improving daytime readability. The display is equally effective at night, relying on the power of its backlight. By adopting a special transflective technology, LG.Philips LCD has developed a backlight that greatly enhances the viewability of an LCD panel during all times of the day.

84-inch Multi-vision Multi-touch LCD for Interactive Public Displays
LG.Philips LCD’s flagship multi-touch display is an 84-inch model created by conjoining four 42-inch panels in a two-by-two array. This acts as a single enormous display with multi-touch capabilities across its entire surface. A screen bezel width of only 15mm, which is 40 percent smaller than the average bezel, adds to the panel’s seamless look and feel. The display also has Full HD 1920 x 1080 resolution, an omni-directional 180-degree viewing angle and impressive 500 cd/m2 brightness. More at LG.Philips LCD.

NEW YORK — Dec 17, `07  –BUSINESS WIRE– Philips Electronics today filed suit in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York to stop Procter & Gamble and its Braun division from continuing its false and misleading advertising campaign promoting its “Pulsonic” line of electric shavers.

The lawsuit asks United States District Court Judge William H. Pauley to order Braun to halt its false advertisements and award damages to Philips. Among other false claims the lawsuit identifies, Philips’ Complaint focuses on Procter & Gamble’s contention that the Pulsonic uses sonic power to generate microvibrations to expose and shave more hair with every stroke. A Connecticut federal court rejected as scientifically baseless similar claims by The Gillette Company, now a division of Procter & Gamble.

The Complaint also attacks Braun’s claim that “9 out of 10” men voted Pulsonic the “best electric shaver they have ever tried” in a 2007 Men’s Health survey. The Complaint notes that the “survey,” in fact, was a scientifically uncontrolled sweepstakes in which Braun gave each participant a free Pulsonic, for which it usually charges the price of $250. BusinessWire.

AMSTERDAM — Nov 26, ‘07 — Royal Philips Electronics NV, agreed to buy lighting- fixtures manufacturer Genlyte Group Inc. for $2.7 billion, its largest purchase ever.

Philips — the world’s biggest lighting maker, a top-three hospital equipment maker and Europe’s biggest consumer electronics producer — said it would launch a cash offer of $95.50 per Genlyte share within five business days. Philips would be paying a premium of 52 percent to Genlyte’s closing price of $62.67 on Friday. Genlyte’s board is backing the bid.

The deal would strengthen Philips’ hand against rival General Electric Co on GE’s home turf. GE said last month it would restructure its lighting business, in which it has already sold plants and cut thousands of jobs, hurt by a steep decline in sales of the traditional incandescent household light bulb.

GE said it had invested $200 million in the last four years on energy-efficient lighting and would close further plants, affecting another 1,425 jobs at its lighting division.

Philips has said it has as much as $30 billion (€20 billion euros) available for acquisitions, dividends and buybacks in the next three years. The company has completed or announced €6.3 billion euros of takeovers, including Genlyte, since buying Lumileds Lighting International BV in 2005. The Lumileds takeover made Philips the world’s biggest maker of high-power LEDs, which are used in mobile-phone cameras and liquid crystal displays.

Philips doesn’t rule out “additional” acquisitions, Chief Financial Officer Pierre-Jean Sivignon said in a conference call broadcast on the Internet today.

Genlyte’s board will recommend the offer to its shareholders, Philips said in the statement. Philips aims to complete the deal in the first quarter of next year.

CHICAGO, IL –BUSINESS WIRE– Nov 25, ‘07 — Today, at the 93^rd annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) in Chicago, Royal Philips Electronics unveiled its latest innovative healthcare products and technologies including the 256-slice Brilliance iCT scanner, allows radiologists to produce high-quality images with exceptional acquisition speed, including complete coverage of the heart and brain.

It is so powerful it can capture an image of the entire heart in just two beats, while incorporating Philips technology that has reduced radiation doses by up to 80 percent.

Brilliance iCT and a new 64-channel system both feature Philips Essence technology, consisting of new X-ray tubes, detectors and reconstruction design elements. This technology can provide detailed and clear 3D images of an entire organ, including the heart and brain, and can also show changes over time.

All images also can be accessed on any computer in a hospital or by colleagues and researchers remotely, to make it easier for the whole team to share information. To date, more than 30 CT systems with Essence technology have been shipped.

The scanners deliver key clinical insights for a wide range of applications in the radiology and cardiology settings, while the enhanced visualizations will be valuable for doctors diagnosing and treating problems within the heart.

The Brilliance iCT scanner is also designed to reduce patients’ exposure to X-rays. The scan is much quicker, as the machine’s X-ray emitting gantry – the giant ring-shaped part that surrounds the patient – can rotate four times in a single second, which is 22 percent faster than current systems. More at Philips Medical Systems.

NEW YORK & MINNEAPOLIS –BUSINESS WIRE– Philips Electronics and the Mall of America (MOA) on Nov 21 announced, they have joined forces for a unique marketing activity aimed at simplifying the shopping experience for the millions of visitors expected to visit the Mall of America from now through the Christmas buying period.

The ‘Philips Simplicity Parking Program’ will enable visitors at the MOA to send a text message to a designated number after parking their car, and then receive information on their phone about exactly where they have parked.

This will help the 50 guests who are unable to locate their cars on a normal shopping day at the MOA, and the estimated 300-400 who will ask Mall security or employees for help this Black Friday.

Simplifying the parking process in shopping malls is no easy feat, and this is especially so at the MOA, a location that is 4.2 million square feet and encompasses 520 stores, the nation’s biggest indoor amusement park, and even a walk through aquarium. It’s easy to get disoriented among the MOA’s more than 12,500 onsite parking spaces, especially for the 40% of shoppers to the Mall who are not local residents.

The traditional Black Friday sales will see more than 150,000 people visit the Mall of America on this day alone, a jump of 50% on normal traffic. More than 28 million people live within a day’s drive to the mall.

Handheld device enables nurses and doctors to make the best decisions at the point of care. Oct 18, ‘07 — Vienna, Austria — At the World of Health IT annual congress, Royal Philips Electronics today unveiled CliniScape, its first mobile clinical assistant (MCA). The medical-grade, easy-to-clean handheld device brings a wide range of features together into a groundbreaking mobile point of care solution defined by Philips, Intel and other industry partners.

These include a 10.4” pen-touchscreen, RFID and barcode scanning, and a digital camera. CliniScape completes the missing link in hospital technology, allowing nurses and doctors to document a patient’s condition instantly, reducing their workload and increasing the quality of bedside care.

Main Features:

Ultra-ergonomic
- 10” XGA pen-touch-screen
- smart swappable battery (3,5 hrs)
- grab & go docking station
- intuitive controls and LED indicators
- lightweight (1,6kg) with backside handgrip to minimize  fatigue

All-in-one functionality
 - Windows Vista Business and Intel Core Solo processor (1,2GHz)
- wireless 802.11 b/g/n connectivity
- barcode imager and RFID reader to support the five rights of patient safety
- digital camera (2Mpxl) to capture pictures of patient wounds
- Bluetooth for cordless connection of external devices and patient sensors
- USB port behind rubber cover

The CliniScape MCA also acts as an ideal mobile point of care solution for accessing Philips’ wide range of clinical applications, such as the IntelliVue Clinical Information Portfolio (ICIP) and iSite PACS, the leading enterprise-wide medical image and information management system.

More at Fimi.Philips here and here