Initial details of president Jan Timmer’s announced cost-cutting measures (CI No 1,459) emerged yesterday. At Philips Components – which has a work-force of 75,000 world-wide, of which nearly half are stationed in Europe – 4,000 jobs are to go by Christmas, almost all of them in Europe. Another 220 jobs will be shed in the corresponding areas at Philips Research Laboratories in Eindhoven: Philips will, as expected, follow National Semiconductor and VLSI Technology and get out of static RAMs, ending development and pilot production of its 1M-bit static and close the associated development centre in Eindhoven, and, as feared, the company is withdrawing from the memory project under the Joint European Submicron Silicon Initiative. Some development of integrated circuit technology will, however, continue at the MOS-3 fab at Nijmegen, where the focus will be on production of MOS parts for consumer equipment. The production of application specific integrated circuits will now be concentrated in Hamburg, Germany. Philips will also halt production of direct driven liquid crystal displays for laptops and monitors which currently takes place at Heerlen, The Netherlands. However, the production of liquid crystal display cells and modules will continue there and in Hong Kong for the instrumentation, automotive and telecommunications industries. Philips will end manufacture of image sensors in Hamburg, moving them on a far smaller scale to the research laboratories in Eindhoven. Similarly, the development and manufacture of semiconductor lasers at Nijmegen and Taiwan will finish, to be continued on a vastly reduced scale at the research laboratories in Eindhoven. Philips Components will remain competitively active in surface mounted devices, Blackline and Jumbo picture tubes as well as in advanced components for applications in computers, audio, video and telecommunications products; it will continue participation in other JESSI projects as planned.
