Philips Natuurkundig Laboratorium Diepeveen built an error-correcting coder-decoder that was delivered in the summer of 1978. The decoder was included in the CD prototype player that was presented to the international press. To commemorate this breakthrough, Philips received an IEEE Milestone Award on March 6, 2009. This breakthrough was also appreciated by Sony and they started a cooperation with Philips that resulted in June 1980 in a common CD system standard. Philips as a whole took a turn for the worse and by the end of the 1980s bankruptcy seemed a very real possibility. Under research director Kees Bulthuis the position of long-term
Philips Computers had and has moderate success selling peripherals such as mice, keyboards and optical devices. Philips also sold and sells computer media such as diskettes and optical media (CD)s. Philips also developed the CD-i standard but it flopped. Another experimental product was the , based on Intel's 80186. It also flopped. Philips PCs were mostly equipped with motherboards designed by Philips Home Electronics in Montreal, Canada. In the late 1990s Philips Pentium PCs were sold based on generic components and cases. These were not proprietarily designed and produced. Philips had a subsidiary that sold the PCs under the Vendex brand: HeadStart.