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Philips Family Descendants’ 2008 Bid for an LED Light-Bulb Fortune

In 2008, Philips descendants backed Lemnis Lighting’s bid to sell a long-lived LED replacement bulb. The report documents the pitch, not a later fortune.
From TheFinanceBase Team3 min to read
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In a May 18, 2008, report, EE Times described Philips descendants Frans Otten and Warner Philips backing Lemnis Lighting, a startup incubated by their company Tendris Holding. Lemnis was selling an LED bulb designed to replace a conventional 40-watt bulb. The headline’s “fortune” was a hope, not a reported outcome: the available sources do not establish whether the descendants became wealthy from Lemnis or what became of that specific consumer bulb business.

Who were the Philips descendants behind Lemnis?

EE Times identified Otten and Warner Philips as great-grandsons of Anton Philips. The report said Philips and Otten, along with two other people, formed Tendris Holding in 2002 to back ventures associated with reducing carbon emissions. Tendris incubated Lemnis Lighting; that relationship did not make Lemnis a Philips subsidiary.

The family connection reached back to Philips & Co., founded in Eindhoven in 1891 by Gerard Philips and his father Frederik to make incandescent bulbs. The Philips Museum’s history says Anton joined the business in 1895, developed sales networks and led its expansion into other areas, including X-ray tubes and radios. Philips Research, founded in 1914, also helped broaden the company beyond lighting.

What bulb was Lemnis trying to sell?

The 2008 EE Times story described Lemnis’s first product as a heat-sink-ringed LED retrofit bulb rated as equivalent to a 40-watt incandescent. It reported a then-current price of $39, down from $59 the previous year. Those are prices reported in 2008, not current pricing or evidence that the bulb remains available.

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Frans Otten cautioned against treating the bulb as a universal replacement: “We don’t advocate replacing all bulbs in the home with ours, but where it makes sense, where you have a 40-W bulb now, you can use an LED bulb.” The article offered no modern specifications for comparing this product with bulbs sold today.

How long did the founders say it would last?

Otten said the bulb could last “after 50,000 hours of use” or 30 years, whichever came first. This was a product claim attributed to him in the 2008 report; the article did not present independent testing to verify it.

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He connected that longevity to the startup opportunity he saw: “You cannot enter the existing lighting market if bulbs have to be replaced every few months. The distribution network needed for that is too daunting, and capital expenditure to support production is also too high. But you can do it with a product that only needs to be replaced every 30 years, or after 50,000 hours of use, whichever comes first.” The argument was Otten’s view of the market, not proof that Lemnis achieved the claimed lifespan or commercial success.

Did the Philips family make another fortune?

The sources do not establish that. The headline reflected the descendants’ attempt to build an LED-lighting opportunity, not a documented financial result. The 2008 article also identified engineer John Roojimans as a major Lemnis shareholder and the developer and patent holder of a high-brightness LED used in the company’s systems.

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Tendris’s current-facing website describes NTL Lemnis as an independent joint venture involving Electronics India Ltd. and Lemnis Lighting B.V., serving LED-lighting markets in Europe, India and Africa. That description does not show whether the specific consumer bulb business reported in 2008 continued in its original form, what happened to that bulb, or what the named descendants earned.

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What happened next in Philips lighting?

Philips Lighting’s 2016 prospectus provides separate company context, not a continuation of Lemnis’s story. It records the introduction of Philips Hue, an internet-enabled LED home-lighting system, in 2012. The prospectus also says Philips Lighting separated from Royal Philips and began operating as a standalone company in 2016. Neither milestone establishes a connection between Hue and Lemnis.

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