Philips Research Press Release

Eindhoven, the Netherlands - Philips Research and New Venture Partners LLC today announced the successful creation and funding of their first spin-out – Liquavista B.V.

Liquavista has been created to commercialize the market opportunities of Electrowetting displays, a technology invented by Philips Research. Set to revolutionize the mobile display market, this technology offers bright vivid colors, video speed, exceptional viewability even in bright sunlight, and substantial power savings compared with existing technologies. Ideal for a wide variety of portable and mobile applications such as MP3 players, watches, cameras, mobile phones, DVD players and automotive applications, Liquavista will play a key role in enabling markets such as TV on Mobile.

Liquavista’s early display products make significant visual impact on the consumer and offer new degrees of freedom for industrial designers. Examples will be demonstrated at the Exhibition of the Society for Information Display 2006 taking place in San Francisco from June 6th until June 8th 2006.

The creation of Liquavista is the result of an initiative between Philips and New Venture Partners to create viable independent businesses based on Philips’ technology portfolio.

“Philips is a very proud parent of Liquavista,” said Dr. Loek Nijman, Director Philips Research Strategy & Business Development, “We believe that the strong technology base from Philips will enable them to create a world class company. With this new initiative for our ideas, Philips is again continuing its tradition of open innovation. Liquavista will be able to focus on maximising the opportunity for its technology, delivering value to Philips Shareholders as we remain a stakeholder in the new business.”

“From the moment we first saw the Electrowetting prototypes at Philips Research we knew it was a compelling business opportunity.” commented Rob Rosenberg of New Venture Partners, “We have worked with the Philips team since then to develop Liquavista as the company to drive it to market. The combination of an experienced team and this patented technology, addresses all the major needs for the next generation of mobile displays. We are very pleased that Liquavista is the first fruit of our partnership with Philips to spin out exciting ventures based on their world class research.”

The technology’s manufacturing processes are highly compatible with the established Liquid Crystal manufacturing infrastructure. This will enable Liquavista to bring its products to market quickly and allow manufacturers to develop high value added products with little capital addition to their existing plant. Liquavista is developing relationships with the existing LCD supply chain and OEMs to bring to market the first innovative products.

The team at Liquavista includes key staff such as Rob Hayes and Johan Feenstra, who are the co-inventors of Electrowetting displays. Mark Gostick, their newly appointed CEO, is experienced in understanding the challenges in developing new technologies in the display market, having been part of the original team that developed Cambridge Display Technology (CDT). The company is based in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, on the High Tech Campus, an open innovation centre, which allows many opportunities for continual technology cooperation with other leading edge companies.
 

High-resolution pictures are available from:

+ www.research.philips.com/newscenter/pictures/
060419-liquavista-pict.html

For further information please contact:
 

Ellen de Vries
Communications Department Philips Research
Tel +31 40 2742321
Email: ellen.de.vries@philips.com

About Royal Philips Electronics

Royal Philips Electronics of the Netherlands (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHI) is a global leader in healthcare, lighting and consumer lifestyle, delivering people-centric, innovative products, services and solutions through the brand promise of “sense and simplicity”. Headquartered in the Netherlands, Philips employs approximately 134,200 employees in more than 60 countries worldwide. With sales of EUR 27 billion in 2007, the company is a market leader in medical diagnostic imaging and patient monitoring systems, energy efficient lighting solutions, as well as lifestyle solutions for personal wellbeing. News from Philips is located at www.philips.com/newscenter.